
Gass. 
Book 



ST 

1889 



30 



^ 



MEN OF 

THE BIBLE. 

Under an arrangement with the English pub- 
lishers, Messrs. A. D. F. Randolph & Co. 
will issue a series of volumes by distinguished 
scholars, on 

THE MEN OF THE BIBLE. 

ABRAHAM: HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the 

Rev. W. J. Deane, M.A. 
MOSES : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Rev. 

Canon G. Rawlinson, M.A. 
SOLOMON : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Ven. 

Archdeacon Farrar, D.D. 
ISAIAH : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Rev. 

Canon S. R. Driver, M.A. 
SAMUEL AND SAUL: THEIR LIVES AND 

TIMES. By Rev. William J. Dean, M.A. 

JEREMIAH: HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the 

Rev. Canon T. K. Cheyne, M.A. 
JESUS THE CHRIST : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 

By the Rev. F. J. Vallings, M.A. 

IN PREPARATION. 
GIDEON : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By the Rev. 
J. M. Lang, D.D. 

Tb the student and the general reader these 
volumes will be found alike useful and inter- 
esting, and the question may well be asked, why 
the intelligent reader should not find the lives 
of the great men of the Bible as useful or as 
fascinating as the story of those who have won 
a conspicuous place in the annals of secular 
history. And yet how mdifferent thousands of 
cultivated persons are to these lives, save only 
as they are recorded in outline in the Holy 
Scriptures. Price, $1.00 each. 

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38 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET, N. Y. 



Jesus Christ the Divine Man 



HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 



y> - by 



F. V. 



J^ F. VALLINGS, M.A., 



VICAR OF SOPLEY, HON. FELLOW, SOMETIME SUBWARDEN OF ST. AUGUSTINE'S 
COLLEGE, CANTERBURY. 



NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 

38 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET. 



J%«lj 



3T3d 



By 
Amer 






JftB. 18 



PREFACE; 



If any apology be needed for adding another to the various lives of Christ 
already before the public, it may be well to state how far this little book 
occupies any independent ground of its own. The object of the writer has 
been to make some small contribution to the moral and spiritual history 
of the Life of lives, and this in some especial relation to missionary work 
and the contact of Christianity with non-Christian religions. "The 
ethical," as Prof. Kuenen well says, "is the universal human." Ethical 
and spiritual sequences of cause and effect have been especially before the 
writer's mind. The Gospel history is " a history, which in every part of 
it," as Weiss says, ''must be considered in the light of Him who trans- 
cends all history." The superhistorical relations of the historical life have 
been touched upon in some of their bearings upon the past, present, and 
future of Christianity. Even Keim, from whose point of view the present 
writer wholly differs, while gladly acknowledging his great ability and 
learning, and not infrequent reverence of tone and enthusiasm of humanity, 
affirms of Christ's life that it is "bounded at its circumference by the 
human limitations of His age, in its centre exalted above all." Such 
language may imply nothing but hero worship, but it is at all events a 
recognition of the incomparable grandeur of Christ's life and character. 

While the moral and spiritual aspects of the Life have been placed in 
the foreground, every effort has been made to present the physical and 
social environment briefly, yet accurately, in the light of modern research. 
In this connection the archaeological and geographical labours of the 
Palestine Exploration Society have been largely drawn upon, and the most 
recent records of travel, especially those of Captain Conder, Mr. Lawrence 
Oliphant, and Dr. Selah Merrill. 

Upon the whole, the greatest obligations are due to Dr. Edersheim. His 
wealth of Rabbinical lore, his great theological erudition, his deep sym- 
pathy with Israel, springing from the strongest of all sources, the fountain 
of blood relationship, and his true spirituality of touch, place his 
work, in the writer's estimate, at the head of all the contemporary literature 
of the subject. Keim's merits are great intellectually, but it is impossible 
for him to sink the negative critic, and to help rewriting, mutilating, and 



IV PREFACE. 

disintegrating the Gospels. Weiss is not free from the same tendency, 
but in the main is on the positive side. His psychological and critical 
powers are high. 

Mr. Stanton's book on the Jewish and Christian Messiah is one which 
deserves more than passing notice. It is the outcome of very patient, 
fair-minded study of the pre-Messianic and the Messianic period. In the 
interests of apology, and from the earnest desire to give the naturalistic 
school full justice, he seems to err sometimes in the direction of concession. 
His estimate of the Talmudic evidence tends to excessive minimizing of its 
value. Dr. Liddon's Bampton Lectures are too well known to need 
mention, and are beyond praise. Emil Schurer's work on " The Jewish 
People in the Time of Jesus Christ " is a deep well of erudition, from 
which all students of the period must draw. The book is, however, in- 
debted to many other writers from very different, and sometimes quite con- 
tradictory, theological schools. Direct quotations are acknowledged in the 
notes. 

In regard to the position taken towards naturalistic and negative critics, 
and in all debateable ground, it may be as well to state that controversial 
points have not been argumentatively treated. First, because the spiritual 
unity, and even the dramatic interest, of the Life is encroached upon. 
Secondly, because the space required would be much greater. There is 
however no wish to evade difficulties. They are often met indirectly and 
suggestively. Conclusions are often stated without elaborate proofs, as 
the result of carefully formulated opinion, and of some labour. Scholars 
know where to look for the pros and cons of debateable questions. The 
general reader satisfies himself with the results of technical investigation. 
The writer cannot pretend to treat the Divinity of Christ as an open 
question. He writes as an humble adorer, and most unworthy disciple. 
The four Gospels throughout are treated as trustworthy historical docu- 
ments. The question of their origin, their genuineness, and authenticity, is 
one far too large to be opened here, and may safely be left by all English 
Christian apologists in the hands of Drs. Westcott, Hort, Salmon, Scrivener, 
and Sanday. 

Jesus Christ, to the writer, is the Ideal Man, the supreme ethical Term 
and spiritual Superlative, the Representative Man, the Divine Man, God 
over all, blessed for ever. To treat His earthly life in its organic spiritual 
unity and moral relations has been in some degree attempted. May the 
Blessed One bless the attempt ! 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Desire of all Nations i 

The life of Jesus the earthly manifestation of the Divine life of 
Jehovah — Historical character of that life upon the basis of the 
"Four Gospels definitely accepted — The doctrine of development 
historically applied — The prceparalio Eva?igelica — The unsatisfied 
spiritual desires of nations — The Roman unsatisfied by power, 
the Greek by thought, the Jew by Rabbinism, the Buddhist by 
Nirvana — The Desire of all nations the fulfilment of unsatisfied 
spiritual needs, individual, national ; and His religion alone uni- 
versal — Jesus the Universal Ideal and Example, and the universal 
and only moral dynamic. 

CHAPTER II. 
The Messianic Hope within the Canon o 



Divine differentiation selecting from the woman's seed a nation, 
a tribe— Typical characters and offices foreshadowing different 
aspects of the Son of Man — Spiritual and devotional preparation 
— The Ideal of the Prophets — The King — The Suffering Servant 
of God — Post-exilian hope — The priestly hope — Minor ajid rela- 
tive ideals contribute to the fulness of the complete hope — Unique 
hope in history — The Divine Man a fulfilment of multitudinous 
foreshadowings. 

CHAPTER III. 

The Post-canonical Messianic Hope 18 

Debased period-Hope persistent — In Apocrypha impersonal and 
national — In the Apocalypses personal and national — In the 
Talmud — Rabbinism — Christ's work to re-create and transform 
as well as fulfil the Messianic Ideal — What might have been. 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Divine Babe 29 

The country priest's home— Zachariasin the Temple — The Angel 
of promise to the priest— The Angel of promise to the Virgin — 
The meeting of the holy women — The spiritual songs — The 
journey to Bethlehem — The holy Nativity — The angelic anthem — 
The visit of the shepherds. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER V. 

fAGB 

The Epiphanies of the Divine Infant . . . . 38 

The Epiphany of the Divine Infant in the Temple — The 
Epiphany of the Divine Infant to the Gentiles — The flight into 
Egypt — The return. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Divine Boy. The Divine Youth « , . ^4 

Nazareth —Physical environment — Home influence and education 
— Epiphany of the Divine Boy — The Father's house — The tender 
Plant — The Divine Young Man — The simple home — Experience 
of men — Communion with nature — God's silences of preparation. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Prophet Baptist. The Divine Baptism . . .58 

John in the Wilderness — The Great Renunciation — The Cry of 
the Kingdom — The Flow of Penitents— Jesus Baptized — Why? 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Divine Temptation ,66 

Personal Tempter, external and real ; not an internal process — 
First offer — Supposed Buddhist resemblance — Second offer — 
Third offer — Temptations recurrent — Temptation representative. 



CHAPTER IX. 

The Lamb of God. The Divine Son of Man at the Social 
Feast. The Divine Reformer in the House of God. 
The Divine and the Human Rabbi 71 

The first disciples — Sense of sin supreme factor — The Lamb of 
God — The Son of Man — The Cana wedding ; its promise — First 
Messianic passover — The Reformer — The Casuist. 



CHAPTER X. 

The Baptist's Farewell Testimony. The Saviour and the 

Samaritaness. The Nazarene 80 

Jesus on the Baptist's ground — The Prophet's last testimony — 
Jesus in Samaria — The Well of Jacob — In Galilee again — In 
Nazareth again. 



CONTENTS. Vll 

CHAPTER XL 

PAGE 

The Divine Galilean 90 

Capernaum — The unknown feast at Jerusalem — Galilee in Christ's 
time and now — Galilean labours. 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Divine Apostle. The Divine Moralist . . 96 

The selection of the Twelve — Organization of the Divine society 
— Organization of the life — Code of the New Kingdom in its past, 
present, and future relations. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Divine Art Teacher. The Divine Nature-worker. 

The Divine Missionary 106 

Capernaum — Nain — The Baptist in Machaerus — The Saviour 
and the lost woman — Divine self-assertion — Spiritual industry — 
Parables of Divine art interpret Nature — Miracle of power over 
Nature — Demonism — Incessant labours — Mission tours — The 
martyr of Machaerus — The Feeding of the Five Thousand — The 
Bread of Life — The stormy lake — The contradiction of sinners — 
Passover retreat — Back to work. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The Divine Transfiguration 123 

On the way to Caesarea Philippi — The Petrine confession — The 
Rock — The Divine sign — The excellent glory — The descent — 
The return — The predictions. 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Ascension journey. The Divine Missionary in Per^a. 131 

The days of going up — Peremptory claims —The Feast of Taber- 
nacles — The adulteress— The Light of the World — The Shepherd 
of Israel — Pastor pastorum — Perasan Mission — The seventy mis- 
sionaries — The Good Samaritan — The devout home scene — The 
prayer of prayers— Peraean work resumed — The Feast of Dedica- 
tion— Return to Peraea — Incarnate energy— Missionary Parables 
— Parables of the Unseen World. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Gathering Shadows , , . 148 

The resurrection of Lazarus — Back to Peraea — Divorce and mar- 
riage — The rights of woman — The rights of children — Behold, we 
go up to Jerusalem ! — Jericho — Zacchaeus and the service of man 
— The blind healed— The pilgrims in debate— The Sabbath rest 
and unction. 



Vlll CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PAGE 

The Messianic Entry. The Contradiction of Sinners . 160 

The Triumphal Entry — The Devil's stand — The Second Temple 
cleansing — The barren figtree — The " Day of Questions" — The 
Divine Controversialist — The Divine Apocalypse — Jewish Escha- 
tology. 

CHAPTER XVTII. 

The Divine Sacrifice 172 

Judas traitor — Wednesday in retreat — The Last Supper — Geth- 
semane — The arrest — The Divine Prisoner before Annas, before 
Caiaphas, before Pilate, before Herod — Judas's end — Before 
Pilate again — Ecce Homo ! — Round the Cross — The Seven Words 
— The Atonement. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

The Divine Sabbath 187 

The marred Body — The Soul free among the dead — Easter Eve. 



CHAPTER XX. 

The Resurrection and the Forty Days 190 

The Resurrection — Magdalena dolorosa — The Resurrection unex- 
pected, a Divine must be — Emmaus — Appearance to the eleven 
apostles and other brethren — Differentiation of offices — Doubter 
Thomas — Messianic critical difficulties — Celsus's objection — 
Vision hypothesis — Galilee again — The fishers on the sea again — 
All authority — Undetailed appearances — The great Forty Days — 
Divine organization — Development of order — Development of 
faith — Continuity, both of soul and body — The four distinct 
Evangelic reports. 

CHAPTER XXI. 
The Ascension and After 21c 



CHAPTER XXII. 

The Character of Christ. Christ as a Moral and 

Spiritual Worker 214 

Miracles morally conditioned— Jesus Christ a spiritual miracle — 
Strength of right will — His originality, negative and positive — 
Authoritativeness — Placed humanity upon the throne of the 
cosmos, and made moral and spiritual interests supreme — Gave 
a moral ideal, and a moral dynamic — Individualism— Univer- 
salism — Women — Children — Practical every-day morality — Con- 
sistency — New virtues and graces — Faith — Hope — Love — 
Humility— Truth — Religion of the Body — Unification of religion 
and morality — Prayerfulness — Self-assertion of sinlessness. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 

"Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the midst of the 
waters" ( Rig- Veda vii. 89.4). 

Tla<sr]Q 0£ rijq olicovfxevrig fjtrav (01 Trpocprjrai) SwafficaXiov iepbv rrjQ 
irtpi Qeov yvwcrgwc, icai ttjq Kara ipvxrjv woXireiag (Athanasius, 
" De Incarnatione," xii.). 

The life of Jesus the earthly manifestation of the Divine life of Jehovah — 
Historical character of that life upon the basis of the Four Gospels 
definitely accepted — The doctrine of development historically applied 
— The prcBparatio Evangelica. — The unsatisfied spiritual desires of 
nations — The Roman unsatisfied by power, the Greek by thought, 
the Jew by Rabbinism, the Buddhist by Nirvana — The Desire of 
all nations the fulfilment of unsatisfied spiritual needs, individual, 
national ; and His religion alone universal — Jesus the Universal Ideal 
and Example, and the universal and only moral dynamic. 

Jesus Christ is God over all, Blessed for ever. The earthly- 
life of Jesus was the manifestation in a single province of God's 
universe of that Divine life which was, and is, and is to be, 
above and beyond, before and after all the universe, the same 
yesterday, to-day, and for ever. The life of Jesus Christ is a 
fragment of a great whole. That whole is the Divine life 
eternal, which was seen by men's eyes, heard by men's ears, 
handled by men's hands for one-third of a century. The study 
of the earthly life of Christ is the divinely revealed mode of 
approach to the knowledge, and, through the knowledge, to the 
possession of the Divine life. In the work and teaching of 
Jesus Christ, the Divine work and teaching were exhibited 
under the limited conditions of earthly life. The Divine 
character was translated into earthly forms to be seen and read 
of all men. 



2 JESUS CHRIST, 

The appearance of Christ amongst men was the greatest 
event in human history ; the relations of God to man and of 
man to God and of man to man underwent a change. This 
change was not due to any alterations in the unchangeable 
character of God, but was the effect of a new approach, long 
foreshadowed and prefigured on God's side to man. The 
incarnation of the Son of God introduced to man a new 
character, a new force, a new example. That character, that 
force, that example, were the revelation of the Divine under all 
the varying conditions of human life. The Divine Life stooped 
down from heaven, humbled itself to the level of its own 
creatures, submitted to death for its own high purposes. 
Nature is not conquered but by obedience. The self-humilia- 
tion of God is another illustration of the truth of the Baconian 
epigram. To conquer human nature, to lead it in a willing 
triumph, the Word became flesh. As the old Fathers have loved 
again and again to express it, God became man that man might 
become God. The Divine became human and emptied itself 
of its glory that the human might be glorified into the 
Divine. 

Reader and writer alike of the life of Jesus Christ do well to 
remember that every deed and word and thought recorded in 
the memoirs of Jesus Christ are God's. The contemplation of 
Christ's life is an act of worship. Worship is the only possible 
attitude of the soul as it stands before the mystery of the 
revelation of the eternal God. Here, the absolute and the 
relative, the infinite and the finite, the unseen and the seen 
touch hands. The creature can only apprehend and understand 
the Creator under its own conditions. God has made Himself 
knowable, intelligible, loveable, by the works of His hands. 
To impart that knowledge to the creature which is eternal life, 
to make the children of men children of God, the Son of God 
became, and continues for ever, the Son of Man. To increase 
the knowableness of God, Christ manifested Him under directly 
and immediately knowable conditions. 

The idea of development is the most important intellectual 
discovery of nineteenth-century thought. Under the dominion, 
and sometimes the exclusive tyranny, of this thought, all our 
historic investigations have been reconsidered. The applica- 
tion of these principles to every department of life and thought 
is an intellectual necessity. And the Christian welcomes the 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 3 

scientific revelations, wherever and however misunderstood or 
perverted, as an inspiration from the God of truth. 

Read in this light the life of Jesus Christ becomes full of 
manifold Divine light. All pre-Christian history is seen to be 
marching from stage to stage to this consummation. All 
Christian history is seen to be the gradual development of the 
work of Jesus Christ. The life of Christ is recognized as 
absolute and unique in itself, but in strict relation to the whole 
chain of God's eternal purpose. What led up to, and what 
followed, that life may be regarded as the natural movements 
of Divine causation, supernaturally born in the bosom of God's 
thought, and supernaturally conditioned by His will. Then the 
manifestation of the Christ is viewed as the personal entry of 
the Divine Being upon a scene long prepared and having before 
it a long, but unknown, future. 

The coming of the Son of Man was not an absolutely isolated 
event in the history of mankind. There was a long prepa- 
ration, a continuous development, a gradual differentiation 
through the ages. Prince after prince, ruler after ruler, prophet 
after prophet, man of God after man of God, were sent. They 
were forerunners : they were types : they were links in the 
chain. They all pointed onwards and prepared the way for 
the coming Prince, Ruler, Prophet, the Man of God. The 
gifts, the powers, the excellencies, the glories of all, were to be 
combined in one. He was to be Crown and Flower as He had 
been the root of all. All the events in all the ages were 
marching forward to this culmination. Conscious and un- 
conscious prophecy reached its fulfilment ; its partial fulfilment 
as the earnest of the higher fulfilments to be. 

Roman, Greek, and Jewish worlds lay in the shadow of 
death. The old order was everywhere changing ; the birth of 
the new creation was at hand ; the world was sick and weary. 
Nothing in life could give satisfaction to the human spirit. The 
cry of the child of Vedic India, " Which of all these gods will 
hear our cry, and be favourable unto us ? Who will come down 
and deliver us?" 1 was the reverberated wail, or the unex- 
pressed sigh, of an infinite wilderness of hearts. 

The Roman conquest had brought into the field of religion 
a number of competitors, none able to hold the sceptre of 

1 Rig-Veda x. 64. 1, quoted by De Pressense, " The Ancient World 
and Christianity," p. 187. 



4 JESUS CHRIST. 

the strongest. The conquest resulted in a fusion of national 
gods and religions, a synthesis, not unlike that seen in some of 
the developments of the Indian Brahmo Samaj. All religions 
were thus put upon an equally relative footing ; and none could 
claim an absolute sanction. Religions which may be equally 
true will be equally false, and to such a position thought was 
actually drifting. The attempt to enforce religion by State 
policy inevitably tended to destroy any claim to higher than 
human sanction. " Honour the gods," said the Roman states- 
man Maecenas, " according to national custom ; and compel 
others to honour them likewise." x 

The only god possible to humanity, when all divinities were 
dethroned, was some anthropomorphic attribute, or combination 
of attributes. The god of the Roman world was power — his 
impersonation the Caesar. He was power and human self- 
worship incarnate. His name was deified. His apotheosis began 
to take place in his lifetime. But " permanent and habitual 
admiration " (according to a modern, but wholly inadequate 
definition of worship) of embodied power could not satisfy the 
cravings of the human heart for anything but hero-worship, 
Still the conception of a Divine Caesar might have assisted 
some minds in the Roman world to admit into the shrine of 
their hearts a Divine man, who claimed to be the incarnation, 
not of political power only, but of moral and spiritual power, 
of power over Nature, of power over the heart and conscience, 
over the temporal destinies of nations, and the eternal destinies 
of men ; and not of power only, which may be worshipped and 
dreaded, but not loved ; but of love, holiness, wisdom, 
righteousness, which constitute what is loveable as well as what 
is admirable. A true Roman was prepared to admire Order 
and Law Incarnate. And the works of Supernatural Order, 
Law, Power, were just those which were set in the Roman 
Gospel of Mark for his instruction. The impersonation of Law, 
Order, Power set upon a new basis, robed in a different uni- 
form, the Imperial purple of His own blood, and wearing a 
Crown but of thorns, and breathing the new and wholly strange 
atmosphere of unspeakable love and infinite humility, was the 
new Divinity who claimed whatever of loyalty, of adoration, of 
reverence, was left in the debased religion, whose gods were 
humanised and whose human beings were deified. Here, as 
1 Quoted by Pressense from Boissier. 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 5 

always and everywhere, Christ came to recognize, transform, 
and elevate all pre-existent good, as well as to crush and 
destroy all pre-existent evil. The disintegration of national 
divinities resulted in the integration of Caesar-worship, the 
actual religion of the Roman world when Christ came to in- 
stitute a new religion. 

The Greeks of the day were merged in the Roman world. 
The worship of the Greek had been anthropomorphic. Plato 
indeed had theistic moments. Aristotle had theistic moments. 
But for both God was a bare abstraction. God was the 
Thought of Thought, but out of relation, not in relation, to the 
object of thought. Kwel a>g ipuixtvov, not Kivtl u>g tpCjv ; i.e.. 
He moves the universe as an object of love, not as loving it, 
as transcending it and out of relation to it. Such a God could 
only be, and was, to the popular mind a negative quantity, 
similar to the Brahma of Hinduism. 

The real divinity of Greeks was Thought, in its various in- 
carnations of philosophy, art, literature. But even intellectual 
salvation and mental satisfaction had not been reached, and 
one inadequate system gave way to another, and left humanity 
with the whole head sick and the whole heart faint. 

On the moral side, Socrates and the Socratic school had 
created a desire for moral ideals, and so far as ethical systems 
could gratify the appetite had provided the best of fare. But 
talking about virtue could never manufacture it. The moral 
dynamic was wanting, and the concrete impersonation of 
abstract moralities. Socrates was the nearest approach to the 
latter. A remarkable passage in the Symposium of Plato 
indicates that his personality had upon some of his disciples 
the effect of creating moral self-dissatisfaction, distinct from 
the mere jealousy of moral or intellectual inferiority. "When 
we hear any other speaker, even a very good one, his words 
produce absolutely no effect in comparison. . . . And if I were 
not afraid that you would think me drunk, I would have sworn 
as well as spoken to the influence which they have always had 
and still have over me. ... I have heard Pericles and other 
great orators, but this Marsyas has often brought me to such a 
pass, that I have felt as if I could hardly endure the life which 
I am leading. . . . For he makes me confess that I ought not 
to live as I do, neglecting the wants of my own soul, and 
busying myself with the concerns of tne Athenians ; therefore 



6 JESUS CHRIST. 

I hold my ears and tear myself away from him. And he is the 
only person who ever made me ashamed, which you might 
think not to be in my nature, and there is no one else who does 
the same." r 

If any of the Socratic school did as much as this they did a 
great deal ; they created such a thirst as prompted the question 
of certain Greeks, " Sir, we would see Jesus," and paved the way 
for those conversions of proselytes to the Israelites, especially in 
the dispersion, in the search after a real and righteous God, or 
from the synagogue of Israel to the Christian Hellenist. 

The Jewish world was self-limited, self-centred, and self- 
absorbed. It was, too, in a state of subjection. How could 
political degradation but affect the nation, and nullify any 
extra-national prestige and influence, even if it were claimed ? 
And it was claimed but partially. " Be of the disciples of 
Aaron (the peaceful) ; loving peace and pursuing peace ; loving 
the creatures and bringing them nigh to the Thorah" 2 — beauti- 
ful words of Hillel's, as Kuenen justly remarks ; " but," as 
he asks rightly, " how, when the theory has to be put into 
practice, and it appears that this ' Thorah,' with its ' hedge ' 
raised by the Sopherim, and made yet stronger and higher in 
accordance with the seven rules drawn up by Hillel himself, is 
inaccessible to the ' creatures ' who are to be brought to it ? " 3 
No, Pharisaism itself, which was the Jewish religion of the day 
when Christ came, as one says who has done it at least justice 
(if not, much more than justice), at "its own most flourishing 
period, proclaims loudly and unmistakably enough its own 
insufficiency. Within, and still more around it, in the life of 
the Jewish people, all manner of phenomena might be noted 
which, to any one capable of observing and fathoming them, 
could admit of no other interpretation than this." 4 

Judaism left to itself could never ascend to an international, 
to an universal religion. The best proof of which may be 
found in modern Judaism, which is the natural development of 
unchristianized Judaism. Modern Judaism never extends its 
borders, never makes converts, or tries to. 

1 Symposium, 215, 216, Professor Jowett's translation ; cf. Trench, 
" Hulsean Lectures," p. 251. 

2 Pirke Aboth. i. 13. 

3 Kuenen, "National Religions and Universal Religions," Hibbert 
Lectures, 1882, p. 214. 4 Ibid. p. 211. 



THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. 7 

If neither Greek, nor Roman, nor Jew, could provide an 
universal, a satisfying religion, we need hardly pursue our 
investigation far into the Oriental religions. No civilized 
nation has ever adopted any of these religions, nor could any 
without denationalizing itself. Whatever truths were in 
them they had neither vitality nor force to preserve their own 
believers from falling into the rear of nations. Nor would it 
require much demonstration to prove that all of them, without 
exception, had long been on the path of deterioration and 
decay, even within the limits of their own obedience. 1 One 
great Oriental religion, that of Islam, destined to play a great 
part in the world, had not yet appeared in the stream of com- 
petition ; and when it did appear, it was " as a side branch of 
Christianity, or, better still, of Judaism." 2 

Buddhism will be noticed at various points later on. But, as 
a satisfaction of the desire of all nations, it pronounces its own 
hopelessness by turning away from the world instead of 
redeeming it, by expelling desire instead of satisfying it, by point- 
ing to nothingness as the crown of existence, and the consum- 
mation of developments. Confucianism again has little room 
for a doctrine of God. " Whatever of this kind is found in 
these {i.e., the Shu and the Shih) exists only in shreds and 
patches" ; 3 and its worship is carried on representatively only 
by the Head of the State, unshared by the multitudes of the 
people. 

All religions, all teachers had failed, had vanished in turn. 
The Roman, the Greek, the Jew, the Oriental, had made their 
several contributions, positive and negative, to the development 
of a new faith. The time was come for an universal religion 
and an universal Person. An Ideal Man was the secret answer 
to spoken and unspoken needs ; an Ideal Man who should take 
up, consecrate, and complete all previous moral ideals ; an 
Ideal Man who should be universal, not fashioned after 
particularist national idiosyncrasies, who was not a Roman, a 
Greek, a Jew, an Oriental. He must be a Son of Man. 

Nor was an Ideal Man sufficient. He would satisfy the 
craving for a moral ideal ; but the standard would be as un- 
attainable as ever. Example would be a source and centre of 

1 Taoism is an example after the death of Confucius. Legge, " Religions 
of China," p. 179. 2 Kuenen, p. 53. 

3 Legge, " Religions of China, " p. 248. 



8 JESUS CHRIST. 

moral attractiveness. But example in itself had been again 
and again tried and found wanting ; and even examples such as 
Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Buddha, had never raised others to 
their own level after the image of their life had faded into the 
dark silence. Power of imitation was required as well as an 
object to imitate. And this could only be given by one who 
could communicate the power. Jesus Christ claimed to be the 
ideal Son of Man, and claimed to give the power to His 
spiritual children to become the sons of God, His brothers in 
work, in life, in character, in glory. Jesus claimed to supply 
moral dynamic ; to heal the inveterate, chronic, universal 
disease of enfeebled will, as well as to supply an absolute and 
universal standard of character and life. 

The Desire of all nations came then to fulfil that desire. He 
came to raise mankind to the levels of their own ideals, as well 
as first to transform their ideals. He came, the Son of God, in 
the uniform language of the Fathers, to make men the sons of 
God. He came to spiritualize, to divinize, to deify ; and so to 
give the true expression, and the higher conservation, even the 
infinite promotion, to all the works and workers of righteous- 
ness, truth, holiness in all the kingdoms and sub -kingdoms of 
thought and life. He came to make men feel they were loved 
by the Supreme Love, and must love the Supreme Beloved. 

And the earthly scene chosen for the theatre of Divine 
manifestation fulfilled the long-ripening process of God which 
had differentiated one people and country for Divine purpose. 
It was well fitted, too, apart from antecedent preparation, being 
the meeting-place of East and West, of many nations, cultures, 
civilizations, faiths. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE MESSIANIC HOPE WITHIN THE CANON. 

" E'n now the shadows break, and gleams divine 
Edge the dim distant line." 

J. H. Newman. 

Divine differentiation selecting from the woman's seed a nation, a tribe — 
Typical characters and offices foreshadowing different aspects of the 
Son of Man — Spiritual and devotional preparation — The Ideal of the 
Prophets— The King— The Suffering Servant of God — Post-exilian 
hope — The priestly hope — Minor and relative ideals contribute to 
the fulness of the complete hope— Unique hope in history — The Divine 
Man a fulfilment of multitudinous foreshadowings. 

The beginning of the coming of the Christ must be looked for 
where there is no beginning, in the eternal thought of the bosom 
of God. The Lamb was slain, and, if slain, sent, from the 
foundation of the world. The protevangelium, or primal 
germinal gospel, is contained in the first word of Divine revela- 
tion. The gospel of hope is contained in the promise of the 
victorious seed of the woman. The gospel of suffering con- 
quest is implicitly foreshadowed in the vision of conflict with 
the Serpent. From the world-wide family of the woman to the 
seed of Shem according to the blessing of Noah passes the 
first Divine specialization, or selection of grace. From the race 
of Shem the Divine finger points to the family of Abraham, the 
servant of the Lord. In the father of the faithful a Messianic 
person as well as a Messianic nation is distinctly foreshadowed. 
Abraham's character forms an important stage in the ethical 
development of the Messianic idea. For his faith became the 
model of all faith. His character as the servant of God estab- 



IO JESUS CHRIST. 

lished a spiritual idea. Such a faith could never die out of the 
world for ever. Abraham was justified by faith. The gospel 
of justification by faith in Christ underlay, as it preceded, the 
law, and was never disestablished. The spiritual forward- 
looking and upward-looking faith of the father of the faithful 
constituted a moment in the spiritual history of a world, 
desiring redemption, peace with God, reconciliation internal 
and external. 

Moses is the next link in the chain of purposive selection- 
The Lawgiver himself is a suggestive type emphasized by his 
own promise of a greater Prophet than himself. The Mosaic 
legislation is a new departure in the Messianic development. 
Floods of light converge upon the Promise of the ages. The 
laws, the worship, the institutions of Israel moved towards one 
central hope, the Ideal Servant of the Lord, 1 the ideal sacrifice, 
the ideal priest, the ideal teacher and lawgiver. However im- 
perfectly realized the Ideal Sufferer was with graduated distinct- 
ness typefied. Judges and rulers paved the way for a single 
ruler, and suggested the heroism, the manliness, the conquering 
majesty, which should be finally embodied in the fulness of the 
Divine formula, the Son of Man. 

Great characters, great national movements, evoke and inter- 
pret great ideas. As the fortunes and dignities of Israel rose 
the ideals of Israel ascended. 

From the house of Israel the differentiating energy of the 
Lord selects the tribe of Judah, and from the tribe of Judah the 
family of David. The prophecy of Nathan is the next landmark 
in Messianic development. The hope of Israel is a royal hope. 
The person of the Messiah is brightening into a clearer splen- 
dour. The anointed of the Eternal wears a Davidic crown. 
The servant of the Lord is a sovereign of man. The Messianic 
idea and the Messianic ideal step by step, subject to relapse 
and retrogression, become fuller, more definite, more concrete ; 
not shadowy abstractions, nor hazy poet dreams. From first to 
last the personal and impersonal elements are interwoven ; the 
Messiah and the nation blend in though and feeling never 
wholly distinguishable. All Israel is ideally a kingdom of 
priests, a holy nation, a Messianic body ; and remains so to the 
last breath of prophecy and to the post-canonical vaticinations. 

1 Cf. Edersheim, " Prophecy and History in relation to the Messiah" 
(p. 187) on " The Ideal Destiny of Israel." . 



THE MESSIANIC HOPE WITHIN THE CANON. II 

God uses every national development to advance spiritual 
development. Slowly, but surely, the links in the chain of the 
Divine philosophy of history unwind. The spirit of the age is 
moulded to His own uses by the activities of the Spirit of God. 
The monarchy embodies and accentuates the monarchical aspect 
of the Messianic hope. An ideal king, an ideal kingdom, 
point the golden stream. Often the kingdom is expected in 
the near future, and the kingdom is only a magnified edition 
of known kingdoms. Wave after wave of disappointment do 
not submerge, but tend to unsecularize the Messianic loyalty. 
Psalm rolls to psalm its welcoming " God save the king" to the 
music of a royal march. Deeper down in the heart of the 
people sinks and waits the royal hope. Even if the psalms 
of the directly Messianic royal hope be reduced to but ten or 
eleven, there are many latent aspirations and inexpressive heart 
vaticinations feeling towards this centre. Unquestionably the 
royal portrait of the Messiah was the most popular one to the 
end. The higher, the deeper, sacrificial beauties of life, of 
work, of character, appealed to the higher and deeper natures 
taught of God in the school of devotion and sacrifice. Power and 
glory are always worshipped in the world. Habitual veneration 
for power and domination is a notable characteristic of Oriental- 
ism. To this day the not real, but superficial, absence of power 
in the ethical portrait of Jesus constitutes a barrier to His 
acceptance by the Indian mind. 

The devotional wealth and pathos of Psalms, un-Messianic or 
unconsciously Messianic, must have gradually uplifted the con- 
sciences of worshippers. Much of spiritual, as of all education, 
comes from unnoticed surrounding and secret impalpable forces. 
Worship, rightly used, is a supreme spiritual educator. The 
Temple feasts, the private sacrifices, the secret prayers of such 
as the seven thousand in Israel who bowed not to Baal, the rich 
incense of family devotions, kept alive among the purer the fire 
of spiritual worship. The sense of worship reacted upon the 
conscience, and all the moral life, filling hearts with awe and 
the consciousness of responsibility, the sense of sin and the 
need of expiation, to which sacrifices gave the deepest ex- 
pression. 

The monarchical ideal remained an unfulfilled hope, a chronic 
disappointment, but an unappeasable undying desire. Prophecy 
sustained the royal hope through evil report and through good 



12 JESUS CHRIST. 

report. "Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and 
seek the Lord their God, and David their king, 1 and shall come 
with fear unto the Lord and to His goodness in the latter days" 
(iii. 4, 5, R.V.), says Hosea, after affirming that " the children 
of Israel shall abide many days without king, and without 
prince " (i. io ; ii. 23), and he promises ingathering mercy to the 
Gentiles. " Behold the days come," said Jeremiah, "saith the 
Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and he 
shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute judgment 
and justice in the land. . . . And this is his name whereby he 
shall be called, The Lord is our righteousness " (xxiii. 5, 6, cf. ; 
xxx. 9). Ezekiel sung the same song of hope : " And I the 
Lord will be their God, and my servant David prince among 
them, I the Lord have spoken it " (xxxiv. 24) ; again, " and 
David my servant shall be their prince for ever" (xxxvii. 25). 
And whatever date be assigned to the remarkable apocalypse of 
Daniel the figure of the Prince Messiah is clearly projected. 

Even in prophecies less directly Messianic, glowing hopes and 
longings find expression, or were characteristic of some whom 
the prophet knew. " The day of Jehovah " as early as the time 
of Amos had become a definite goal of aspiration. Such 
language would take shape and colour in more definite outlines 
as the connection of the future age with a single Personality be- 
came more clearly understood, and would contribute to bathe 
His coming with associations of glory and awe. 

But a new and more momentous contribution was made by 
prophecy to the conception of the Messianic Hope in its 
portraiture of the suffering Servant of God. The idea of 
the Servant of God, like that of the kingdom of God, per- 
vades the whole Old Testament. Israel as a people, 
Israel's rulers, kings, prophets, priests, were ideally servants 
of the Lord. But it was reserved for prophecy to fill in the 
colours, and fit on the framework, to preliminary sketches. 
The prophets had admittedly contemporaneous relations, and a 
historical basis. But the portrait of the Suffering Servant finds 
no original before the time of its fulfilment. The germs of the 
idea are to be found in the Passion Psalms, such as the twenty- 
second. The Psalmist may have, at times, idealized his own 
sufferings, but he spake in the Spirit, and his winged words went 

1 " The older Jews, of every school, Talmudic, mystical, Biblical, gram- 
matical, explained this prophecy of Christ " (Pusey, sJ.). 



THE MESSIANIC HOPE WITHIN THE CANON. 1 3 

farther than his own horizon, and consciously travelled to 
infinite goals. The sufferings of psalmists and prophets, the 
sufferings of Israel gave additional intensity of feeling and 
vividness of realization to a conception already foreshadowed 
in the primal promise, and in the intimation of the Egyptian 
bondage of his seed to Abraham, and in that bondage 
itself, and in all the pre-Messianic sufferings of the servants of 
God. 

Isaiah l is the richest treasury of Messianic prophecy, and 
the largest contributor both to the joys and sorrows of the pre- 
dicted Messianic life. Isaiah's prophecy of the Servant of God 
is complete in its wealth of pathetic detail too familiar to need 
illustration. It is an " archetypal Sorrow," an impersonated 
Anguish, which appears before him. Yet his "internal pro- 
gramme" is gorgeous with triumph, and radiant with victorious 
hope. And he sees more clearly than any what Psalmists at 
times apprehend, the universal relations of His royalty. " He 
will be the rallying point of the world's hopes, the true centre of 
its government" (xi. 10). 2 The conceptions of Isaiah foreshadow 
a superhuman being. His language attributes Divinity to 
Messiah. He is to Isaiah, however far his vision soared 
beyond the flights of ordinary contemporaneous aspiration, 
"The Mighty God" (ix. 6), as Jeremiah in the passage already 
quoted identifies Him with Jehovah (xxiii. 5, 6). 

The chastisement of the Captivity touched with a new pathos 
the traditional hope And "while the Messianic ideas were 
growing in spirituality, they were also increasing in influence. 
This is the most characteristic note of the new age. The 
Messianic ideas were popularized. Hitherto they were the hopes 
of the prophets ; now they became the hopes of the people." 3 
Haggai contributed to the Messianic hope the remarkable 
prophecy " of the latter glory of this house " (ii. 6-9). Zechariah 
announces definitely : " And many nations shall join themselves 
to the Lord in that day, and shall be My people " (ii. n) ; and 
identifies the One " whom they have pierced " with Jehovah 
Himself. Malachi closes the Canon with mingled promises and 

x The question of a second Isaiah, or Great Unknown, need not here be 
discussed. The outlines of the Messianic portrait remain the same, how- 
ever many hands may (or may not) have held the brush. 

2 H. P. Liddon, Bampton, p. 84. 

3 W. F. Adeney, " The Hebrew Utopia," p. 295. 



14 JESUS CHRIST. 

warnings clustering round the rising of the Sun of righteous- 
ness, and the mission of Elijah the prophet (iv. i-end). 

The monarch, the prophet, brought various lights, and em- 
bodiments of attributes, to the fulness of the Messianic concep- 
tion. Had the priesthood of Israel no relation to the blessed 
Hope ? Indirectly, or directly, we can trace a priestly element 
in the Messianic ideal. Indirectly in the stamp of holiness. To 
adopt Kuenen's words, 1 without his conclusions. " ' Be holy, for 
I, Yahweh, am holy ' (Lev. xix. 2 ; xx. 7, 26, cf. 24 ; xxi. 8, 15, 
23 ; xxii. 9, 16, 32 ; xi. 44, 45 ; Numb. xv. 40, 41). In these 
words the priestly thorah itself sums up its conception of 
religion. It is with this demand that it comes to the whole 
people and to every several Israelite. . . . The centre of gravity 
for him lies elsewhere than for the prophet ; it lies in man's 
attitude not towards his fellow-man, but towards God ; not in his 
social, but in his personal life." A second mark of the priestly 
ideal " may be found in the assumption of worship amongst the 
duties of the people consecrated to Yahweh, and of every 
Israelite in particular." Such a deeply-rooted feeling could not 
be satisfied with anything short of a Priest, as well as a Prophet, 
Messiah. But the conception of His priesthood was latent 
rather than explicit. The One Hundred and Tenth Psalm, a 
Messianic Psalm of David, to which Christ Himself referred 
His objectors, declares — 

" The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, 
Thou art a priest for ever 
After the order of Melchizedek." 

In Psalm exxxii. the anointed, the Heir of David, the Lord's Ser- 
vant, " wears not the kingly crown (dtarah), but the priestly 
(neser), with its golden plate or flower (tsits).'"' 2 Zechariah pre- 
dicts the Lord's Servant, the Branch, who "shall sit and rule 
upon his throne and be a priest upon his throne." 

Such conceptions must have prepared the way for the full 
Christian doctrine of the Priesthood of Messiah unfolded in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. Nor can there have been wholly want- 
ing in Israel men like Zacharias, the spiritual forefathers of the 
great company of the priests who became obedient to the faith, 

1 Hibbert Lectures, p. 160 foil. 

2 "Church Quarterly Review," No. 51, p. 112. 



THE MESSIANIC HOPE WITHIN THE CANON. 1 5 

men who had risen in some degree to the purpose of the Divine 
election, and were recognizably in life and heart as well as ex- 
ternal communion with God, those " whom He hath chosen," 
those " who are His," who are "holy," whom He " will cause to 
come near unto Him" (Num. xvi. 5). Such men could not but 
raise the standards of holiness. Such men could not but suggest 
an ideal Holy Priest, who should show forth their holiness, 
while He transcended and ennobled it. And so the stock of 
Aaron would prepare for the Priest not of their order, but 
of Melchizedek's. In the wonderful Messianic chapter of Jere- 
miah predicting the Branch of righteousness, the prophet con- 
nects the promise of a perpetual priesthood with that of a per- 
petual throne. Both are put on the same level ; and the former, 
the covenant of priesthood is repeated several times. Jeremiah 
does not suggest that " David My servant " would also be 
" David My priest." But his words must have gone far towards 
universalizing the conception of the priesthood, and extending 
its functions into the infinite distance. 

Ezekiel the priest in his apocalypse of the glorified temple 
and service shows the priestly bias and prepares the way for an 
ideal worship and priesthood. 

The place of worship in the devotional preparation of the 
people and in the moral education of the conscience has been 
alluded to already. And we may add, in connection with the 
development of the priestly aspect of the Messianic ideal, that 
"we find from beginning to end the deep impress of a sacri- 
ficial system which must have been unmeaning and self-imposed, 
and is consequently an unexplained phenomenon in history if 
it did not lead upward and point onward to the perfect priest- 
hood and sacrifice of One" 1 "who hath been made, not after 
the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an 
endless life" (Heb. vii. 16). That these sacrifices led up to, and 
were fulfilled in, the sacrifice of Christ, seems to the Christian 
as undeniable as the historic fact that since that one Sacrifice 
for sins for ever " the blood of bulls and goats " has ceased to 
flow. 

To the eye of Christian faith the stream of Messianic pro- 
phecy deepened and widened through the ages. Many con- 
ceptions, primary and secondary, direct and typical, poured 

1 Professor Leathes' " Religion of the Christ," p. 92. 



1 6 JESUS CHRIST. 

into the quickening waters their various and enriching deposits. 
The figure of the Christ becomes more concrete, more definite. 
The Ideal takes up within Himself all the ideals of prophet and 
priest and king. Every relative revelation contributed its sub- 
scription to the sum total. The temperaments of the prophets, 
the spiritual characteristics of psalmists, the surrounding con- 
ditions of the social and religious atmosphere bathed the coming 
age and man in a thousand lights, many coloured, and variable 
from age to age, and from mind to mind. " But on the whole 
there is a wonderful continuity and persistence in the stream 
of prophecy which flows down the ages," l and an internal con- 
sistency. The various elements harmonize in a most complex 
and intricate concord of Divine music. Even a modern Jewish 
Rabbi 2 affirms that "the doctrine of the coming of a personal 
Messiah is the purple thread that runs through the writing of 
our prophets and historians." And " one of the thirteen funda- 
mental articles of faith, which every Israelite is enjoined to 
rehearse daily, is, ' I believe with a perfect heart that the 
Messiah will come ; and although His coming be delayed, I 
will wait patiently for His speedy appearance."' 3 The very 
possession of this splendid hope is an unique fact in the history 
and literature of nations. Its vitality, its colour, its imperishable 
interest, its indestructibility, are evidenced through all the rises 
and falls, changes and chances, which embarrassed or assisted 
its fulfilment. 

And so the Ideal Divine Man was foreshadowed. And the 
praters of the righteous were a factor in the Divine develop- 
ment no one can recover from the higher side of history, that 
of the unseen. " Each victory, each deliverance, prefigured 
Messiah's work ; each saint, each hero foreshadowed some 
sepaiate ray of His personal glory ; each disaster gave strength 
to the mighty cry for His intervention ; He was the true soul 
of the history, as well as of the poetry and prophecy of Israel." 4 
And the ideals, dimmer, but indestructible, outside the chosen 
people shed their lustre, or moved moral desire, onward and 
upward. Using "sculptors" and "painters" in the sense of 



1 W. F. Adeney. 

2 Adler's " Course of Sermons," pp. 125, 126, quoted by Gloag, "Mes- 
sianic Prophecy," p. 81. 3 Gloag, s. I. 

4 Dr. Liddon, Bampton Lectures, p. 92. 



THE MESSIANIC HOPE WITHIN THE CANON. IJ 

moral and spiritual art workers, we may adopt the noble lines 
of a modern poet : 

" All partial beauty was a pledge 
Of beauty in its plenitude . . . 
The one form with its single act, 
Which sculptors laboured to abstract, 
The one face, painters tried to draw, 
With its one look, from throngs they saw. 
And that perfection in their soul, 
These only hinted at? The whole, 
They were but parts of ?" x 



R. B. Browning, "Christmas Eve and Easter Day.' 



CHAPTER III. 

THE POST-CANONICAL MESSIANIC HOPE. 

" Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God and the God of our fathers, the 
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God great 
and powerful and terrible, God Most High, who bestowest Thy benefits 
graciously, the Possessor of the universe, who rememberest the good deeds 
of the fathers and sendest a Redeemer unto their sons' sons for Thy 
Name's sake in love. Our King, our Helper, and Saviour and Shield, 
blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Shield of Abraham" (Tephillah, "The 
Prayer," the first of the Eighteen Benedictions, translated by Bishop 
Lightfoot, " Clem. Rom." p. 462). 

Debased period — Hope persistent — In Apocrypha impersonal and national 
— In the Apocalypses personal and national — In the Talmud — Rab- 
binism —Christ's work to re-create and transform as well as fulfil the 
Messianic Ideal — What might have been. 

We enter now upon a different phase of the Messianic develop- 
ment. It is in some respects retrogressive. The debased 
period of Messianic architecture has arrived. But we have the 
clearest historic evidence that the hope of hopes had not 
withered away. Indeed if it had, we should have found ourselves, 
first, in absolute collision with the Gospels and Josephus and 
secular historians, which show a very vivid and widely existing 
working of the hope in all classes, and beyond Palestine ; and 
secondly, in absolute collision with all doctrines of development 
which look for great effects in the operation of an antecedent 
concourse of progressive causes ; so that Christ and His dis- 
ciples would have first had to manufacture a Messianic idea 
and permeate the nation with it, and then claim to satisfy it. 
Adequate data are preserved to indicate, not as fully and clearly 
as would be desirable, but with sufficient fulness for historical 



THE POST-CANONICAL MESSIANIC HOPE. 19 

requirements, the persistence of the Messianic hope outside the 
limits of canonical history. The age of the Apocalypses suc- 
ceeds the age of the prophets. The disintegration of the his- 
torical life of the nation encouraged supra-historical tendencies. 
The imagination ran after ideals when the school of reality 
shut so many doors to hope. In a similar way peoples who 
have enjoyed a very small measure of political freedom have 
sometimes shown an extraordinary tendency to free speculation 
and audacities of mental venture. 

We come first, for convenience of arrangement, in contact 
with the Apocryphal books, Palestinian and Grecian, which 
are of very various dates. It is in vain here that we look for a 
personal Messiah. Messianic hopes are vague and impersonal. 
There is, however, nothing irreconcilable with a personal 
Messianic hope. Indeed the Messianic times and a Judaic 
kingdom are the undercurrent of all Apocryphal aspiration. 
And there are various elements which survive of the older hope, 
but narrowed, nationalized, and distorted. The eldest of the 
Palestinian books is the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach, or 
Ecclesiasticus. Here we find glimpses of an everlasting priest- 
hood, "Moses consecrated him" (Aaron), and anointed him 
with holy oil ; this was appointed unto him by an everlasting 
covenant, and to his seed, so long as the heavens should re- 
main," &c. (xlv. 15). So again of "an holy temple to the Lord 
which was prepared for everlasting glory" (xlix. 12). 

In the Book of Tobit (xiii. 16, 18) we hear of a Jerusalem 
rebuilt with sapphires, and emeralds, and precious stone," all 
whose " streets shall say Alleluia," and that " all nations shall 
turn, and fear the Lord God truly, and shall bury their idols. 
So shall all nations praise the Lord," &c. (xiv. 6, 7). In the 
beautiful Book of Wisdom placed by some at about 150 B.C., 
which however may be of Christian date, we read of the 
righteous — "they shall judge the nations, and have dominion 
over the people, and their Lord shall reign for ever." In 
1 Maccabees hints appear of a coming "faithful prophet" 
(iv. 46 ; xiv. 41). In 2 Maccabees the dim but remarkable hope 
that God, "as He promised in the law, will shortly have mercy 
upon us, and gather us together out of every land under heaven 
into the holy place " (ii. 18). In Baruch the burden is " Take 
a good heart, O Jerusalem" (iv. 30). Alike in Ecclesiasticus 
(xxxvi. 1— 17), in Baruch (iv.), and in Tobit (xiii. 14), national 



20 JESUS CHRIST. 

prospects, national exaltation, and Gentile depression, are the 
prominent landmarks in the far, or near, distances. 

But we have other documents of the post-canonical period 
which are much richer in Messianic colouring. The Apocalypses 
distinctly pre-intimate a personal Messiah. 

In the most ancient pre-Christian fragment of the Jewish 
Sibylline verses, a famous passage speaks of the coming of a 
king from the sun, 1 air ijeXioio : 

" Then shall God send a king from the Sun, who shall cause 
the whole earth to cease from wicked war, when he has slain 
some and exacted faithful oaths from others. Neither shall he 
do all these things of his own counsel, but in obedience to the 
beneficent decrees of the Most High." 2 

And again in the later, but pre-Christian fragment : 

" But when Rome shall rule over Egypt also, uniting it under 
one yoke, then indeed the supreme kingdom of the King Im- 
mortal shall appear among men. And there shall come a pure 
king to hold the sceptres of the whole earth for ever and ever 
as time rolls on." 3 

In the pre-Christian portion of the Book of Enoch (here, as 
before, we refer to the critical editors for the chronological and 
textual questions, and adopt only probable conclusions), we find 
most important Messianic contributions. Here there is the 
remarkable apocalypse of the white bullock : 

" And I saw that a white ox was born, having great horns, 
and all the beasts of the field and all birds of the air feared him 
and prayed to him continually." 

In the Book of the Three Parables the Messiah is repeatedly 
called the " Son of Man ; " but the expression sounds like a 
Jewish Christian insertion. 

The Fourth Book of Esdras is supposed by some to be pre- 
Christian, but more probably dates from the reign of Domitian. 
The Apocalypse of Baruch is also too late to be pre-Christian. 

But in the beautiful, so-called Psalter of Solomon we are in 

1 Better than as Schurer, " from the East. 1 ' 
a Stanton, p. 114. 3 Ibid., p. 117. 



THE POST-CANONICAL MESSIANIC HOPE. 21 

the presence of undoubted pre-Christian documentary evidence 
to the Messianic Hope. 

The desolation of Jerusalem, the dispersion of the " holy 
people," and God's encouraging promises to them form the 
subject of a book, which both in its loftiness of moral beauty and 
literary skill (i has remarkably caught the tone of some of the 
noblest prophecies of the Old Testament." r The date is 
probably the time of Pompey's capture of Jerusalem. The 
great Messianic passage is from xvii. 23 to xviii. fin. ; and 
herein is found the specific use, some consider the first, of the 
term Christ as the title of One to come. A fragment only may 
here be briefly rendered from Hilgenfeld's text : 

" Behold, Lord, and raise up unto them their king, the son of 
David, in the time which Thou, God, knowest, to reign over Thy 
servant Israel. . . . And he shall gather together an holy 
people, whom he shall lead in righteousness, and shall judge 
the tribes of the people sanctified by the Lord their God. . . . 
And there is no unrighteousness in his days in their midst, for 
all are holy, and their King is the Lord Christ. . . . And he is 
pure from sin, to rule a great people, rebuke rulers, and destroy 
sinners in strength of word. . . . Shepherding the flock of the 
Lord in faith and righteousness, and he shall not suffer them 
to be weak in their pasture. . . . Under the rod of chastening 
of the Lord Christ ..." 

The Assumption of Moses, and the Book of Jubilees, of 
doubtful date, the former placed by Schiirer at the beginning of 
the Christian era, contain no Messianic King but general out- 
lines of a blessed future. 

In the great Hellenised thinker, Philo, we seem to find no 
prominent traces of a Messianic King — a possible suppression 
of conviction upon political grounds — but a God-sent warlike 
hero does appear, though the Messianic hopes find expression 
more in a picture of a national restoration of glory and great- 
ness. 

Josephus, like Philo, is of the first century a.d. He so far 
apostatized from the national hope as to apply Messianic pro- 
phecies to Vespasian. But his pages overflow with testimony 
to the presence and intensity of the hope amongst the people, 
and its influence upon the rebellion against Rome. 
1 Stanton, p. 77. 



22 JESUS CHRIST. 

Jewish works written after the Christian era are coloured by 
the violence of the anti-Christian controversy. But they clearly 
represent Jewish traditional views, however modifiedby the impact 
with Christian thought. Mr. Stanton seems to unduly minimize 
the evidential value of Talmudical literature. That literature 
is so strictly traditional, so substantially self-consistent in spirit, 
and so clearly a development of the debased Judaism, that it 
is unhistorical to ignore its evidential validity. Very full treat- 
ment of the Rabbinical expectations must be sought in Eder- 
sheim's wealth of quotations. These point to the conclusion 
that the Rabbinical Messiah was a super-human man, hovering 
between Divinity and humanity, higher than the angels, existing 
before the world. They indicate also a "character of finality " * 
in His work and office which would assist minds towards a 
belief in His super-human greatness, in His essential Divinity. 

The contrast upon merely literary comparison between the 
canonical and post-canonical literature is striking. Even Jose- 
phus follows " the uniform Jewish tradition to the effect that the 
prophetic succession ceased with Malachi, and marks the time 
of Artaxerxes as the limit of the period of inspiration." 2 

With the ebb of the prophetic spirit had drifted away the 
glory and spiritual beauty of the Scriptural Messianic Ideal. 
From the rich creativeness, both in literary art and spiritual 
science, of the God-gifted members of the goodly fellowship of 
the prophets, religious literature sunk for the most part into the 
hands of the Sopherim, and religious life under the guidance of 
the late-born sect of the Pharisees. 

The great fact in the religious condition of Israel at the time 
of Messiah's Advent was the dominance of Rabbinism. The 
religious post-exilian revival lacked the breath and health of 
inspired movement. Palestinian Judaism sank into narrow 
legal sectarianism. The letter of the Law became a religious 
fetish after the spirit had been quenched. Foreign subjugations 
drove the Palestinian Jews more into themselves religiously. 
Hellenism', and the intellectual breadth and general culture 
which accompanied it, exercised the greatest influence upon the 
Jewish dispersion, who formed the majority of the nation, and 
especially upon the western diaspora, both negatively and 

1 Stanton, p. 148. 

8 " Josephus," in Smith's " Dictionary of Christian Biography," article by 
Dr. Edersheim, 



THE POST-CANONICAL MESSIANIC HOPE. 23 

positively made important contributions to preparedness for the 
new revelation. But in Palestine, " the land," as Jewish pride 
called it, Hellenism, while affecting commercial life and industry 
among the middle classes, while attracting and often altogether 
secularizing and half-paganizing rulers of the Herodian School, 
and the wealthy and powerful Sadducee faction, made no im- 
pression upon the dominant and popular religious feeling. 
Pharisaism, through its organ, the Synagogue, controlled all the 
religion of the most religious of peoples. The Scribes and 
Pharisees had succeeded to the spiritual and intellectual 
supremacy of the prophets. The priests, under such secularized 
leaders as the tools of the Roman Government, who dishonoured 
the pontificate and turned it into a source of personal gain and 
political and social power, had but little religious influence. 
Their lips had ceased to keep knowledge ; and men would not 
seek the Law at the mouth of the son of Levi, but at the mouth 
of the Rabbi. 

The Sopherim, or Scribes, were the professional doctors of 
the Law ; they held the key of knowledge. The Pharisees were 
their disciples, " who put their theory into practice. If the Scribes 
consecrated themselves wholly to the study of the Law and its 
application to life, or more truly to the subjection of the life of 
the people in all its branches to the precepts of the Law, the 
Pharisees are absorbed in its observance and in the realization 
of righteousness, regarded as conformity to its ordinances." l 
The Scribes sat with the chief priests and elders as judges in 
the ecclesiastical courts, both in the capital and in the provinces. 
Even in heaven they claimed posts of supreme honour, the 
flatteries of the angels, and the eulogies of God. Religion 
under their influence became a profession ; the conduct of life 
a high art. " To know the six hundred and thirteen command- 
ments of the written Law, the incalculable number of the un- 
written," 2 was the province of the elect. 

When we wonder at the subjection of the common people 
(the Am-ha-arets) to the Rabbis we have to bear in mind that 
no such thing as individualism could exist, or ever did exist 
except among the select few, in any ancient people. The sense 
of individual freedom and independence and moral and intel- 

1 Kuenen, p. 208, Hibbert Lectures. 

2 Wellhausen, " History of Israel," p. 502. 



24 JESUS CHRIST. 

lectual responsibility is of modern and, above all, of Christian 
extraction and growth. The very word conscience is practi- 
cally speaking of Christian birth and education ; though the 
moral feeling it certifies and conveys of course is coextensive 
with human nature down to the most degraded types in some 
form or other. 

Again the material interests of the people followed in the 
wake of those of the rulers. This is true to some degree, even 
under modern conditions. And the material power and pros- 
perity of the time lay largely in the hands of the Sadducees and 
Romanisers,who for religious purposes supported the Rabbinical 
party in opposing a Messiah who made spiritual claims on 
spiritual grounds, and exacted a corresponding moral, spiritual 
allegiance from the heart and life, instead of ceremonial ad- 
hesion, or political support. All the material influences of the 
time worked against Christ. We see it in the extreme sharp- 
ness and decisiveness of His own words about the danger of 
riches, and the hardness with which rich men entered the 
Kingdom of God. It is not always easy now to be true to 
Christ, when the kingdoms of trade and industry, the acquisition 
and distribution of wealth, material prosperity and social com- 
fort, and the forces of politics, have bowed to the sceptre of 
Christian influence, and always nominally in Christian countries, 
and, in part actually, acknowledge His lawful control. It must 
have been as hard then when the sacrifice required was most 
violent to become a Christian, as it is now for a modern Jew or 
high caste Hindu. 

Nor were the people intellectually qualified for that indepen- 
dence of judgment, which is so characteristic of Western indi- 
vidualism, even without the basis of competent knowledge. 
They revered the Law, but could not read a word of it in the 
original Hebrew. The Interpreter must translate the sacred 
lore from the Hebrew into the vernacular Aramaic. Here he 
was dependent upon the current interpretation of the Scribes, 
and they upon the tradition which they had accumulated and 
formulated with vast labour. So the Mishnah or Second Law, 
"which intended to explain and supplement the first," super- 
seded and overrode it. "This constituted the only Jewish 
dogmatics, in the real sense, in the study of which the 
sage, Rabbi, scholar, scribe, and Darshan, were engaged." 
The Halachah applied and extinguished while professing to 



THE POST-CANONICAL MESSIANIC HOPE. 2$ 

interpret the Old Testament. The Haggadah, or popular ex- 
position, claimed only personal authority. " But all the greater 
would be its popular influence, and all the more dangerous the 
doctrinal license which it allowed." * 

Because religion had sunk into externalism, and moral 
interests had been crowded out, therefore the Messianic ideal 
had inevitably fallen with religion. Rabbinism had proclaimed 
as its watchword devotion to the Thorah. Such an ideal might 
have been nobly conceived and nobly carried out. Unhappily 
the Law had ceased to be that of Divine revelation. Tra- 
ditionalism, while professing to explain, had actually superseded 
the Law. Obedience to the Law meant external obedience ; the 
righteousness of the Law meant external righteousness. The 
result of obedience was merit, and the result of merit sonship. 
The Law had thus lost most of its moral content and force. 
Legal holiness had degenerated into ceremonial purity, like 
that of the Brahmin. The ceremonial law was multiplied into 
an infinity of petty pedantries, pressing upon the minutest 
details of daily life as an intolerable yoke. 

The favoured ideal of the Messiah was now that of a great 
Rabbi, who should exalt the Law to its utmost bounds, who was 
also a great conquering king who should impose the Thorah 
upon the necks of the Gentiles, and the Rabbinical party high 
enthroned upon the heads of all in material and social 
supremacy. 

Jesus Christ had to chose between the Scriptural and the 
Rabbinical ideals. They were irreconcilable, they were in- 
capable of mutual concession, of modification, or of transfor- 
mation. He chose to revert to first principles. He was a 
restorer of the old. He preserved the Law by casting off the 
parasitic incubus of traditionalism. He preserved all that was 
of universal moral validity in the old by transforming it. He 
did not merely restore, He renewed, re-created. 

If Christ had adopted the Rabbinical ideal, He would, un- 
doubtedly, have been accepted as the Jewish Messiah. And 
the temptation constantly presented itself to Him. As it was, 
He had to unteach as much as to teach. He had to destroy as 
much as to build up. He was a destructive critic as well as a 
constructive founder. 

We cannot then admit much force in certain modern 
1 Edersheim, i. n, 12. 



26 JESUS CHRIST. 

apologies for Rabbinism. They have, for the most part, 
naturally emanated from Jewish writers, who have maintained 
their tradition, and are the modern representatives of the 
Rabbinical schools. It is to be regretted that so great a scholar 
as Kuenen, 1 while keenly criticizing some of the more patent 
defects, should have done Rabbinism what seems something 
more than justice. Whatever may have been the merits of 
individual Rabbis, however much better they, or their disciples, 
may have at times been than the;r creed, the damning fact 
remains that they were at the head and front of the anti- 
Messianic opposition. Although upon the Sadducaic high 
priests rest the chief guilt of the national apostasy, consum- 
mated in the judicial murder of the Messiah, yet it was the 
Rabbis who were the sleepless opponents, the malignant critics, 
and false accusers, in their consistent hatred of the Messiah and 
all His words and works. 

The sense of sin, both individual and national, of spiritual 
failure and shortcoming, which breathes in all the minor keys 
of the Psalter, had amongst all but, it may be, a small remnant, 
vanished away. National and individual pride, externalism, 
exclusiveness, fanaticism, were the dominant features in the 
character of pre-Christian Israel. Some remnant the chasten- 
ing fires of discipline, the beatitudes of the school of suffering, 
had purified and prepared. But they were as invisible in the 
general mass as the unseen stars in the unapproachable 
heavens. To such the sacred music of the Psalms still spake 
in intelligible accents ; the words of the prophets searched 
their hearts ; the Temple feasts and sacrifices, and the great 
fast moved them to penitential tears, or raptures of thanks- 
giving ; the worship of the Synagogue and the home stirred 
and lifted them to Divine communions, and penetrated with the 
sense of the unseen Holy One. Some of this type may have 
originated, or appreciated in an extra legal sense, the saying 
that " if all Israel would together repent for a whole day, the 
redemption by Messiah would ensue." 

But, taking Israel as a whole, the question referring to the 
Second Advent might have been applied to the first, when 
the Son of Man cometh shall He find faith on the earth ? 
The hard task that lay before the Christ was then twofold. 

1 Vide especially, Lecture V. , in the Hibbert Lectures. 



THE POST-CANONICAL MESSIANIC HOPE. 27 

First, to convince people that He was the Messiah. Secondly, 
to convince them that He was not the Messiah of their pre- 
conceptions, but of Scriptural revelations ; to rehabilitate the 
Messiah of the prophets ; to transform their whole Messianic 
conception. His task was to change and transfigure their whole 
life, with all its wealth of hope, and love and passionate desire ; 
and to plant in the torn soil of hearts bruised and broken for a 
new seed a living faith in Himself, as the Messiah and the Son 
of God. Alas the Messiah was rejected before He came, in His 
inspirations and prophecies, types and shadows ! Had the 
Divine light been truly reflected, it would not have shone into 
darkness. Had the level of inspiration found a corresponding 
height of Messianic belief, height would have answered to 
height, re-echoing the Divine Voice, and deep to deep. 

Through Him and His Israel, as His ministering servants, 
all nations were called to be servants of God ; Israel was 
to be universalized. All Israel should have been John 
the Baptists. Israel failed their high mission, but their 
casting off, because they cast off, did not thwart the plan 
of God, and involve the Gentiles in their loss. The 
Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the dispersion of 
Jewish thought and morals with the Jews, were Messianic 
stepping-stones to Gentile hearts. Even now a great future 
appears to await Israel repentant ; and their Divine work of 
service and place of honour is only half lost and half deferred. 
Had but Israel known the things that belonged to their peace ! 
Had they but preserved the true tradition of the Messianic 
prophets, had they but arisen and stood upon their feet, an 
exceeding great army, when the trumpet call of the prophet 
of the wilderness sounded — then to a people who had been 
true to God's call — the Christ would have come. This new 
demand upon their faith would have been met with the fervour 
of instant and wholesale acceptance. The Christ of God, 
acknowledged by His own, would have gone forth at the head 
of His people, His chosen, and gathered in, without the slow 
long agonies of patient missionary conquest, the fulness of the 
Gentiles. On Israel rests the first and heaviest responsibility 
for what is and what might have been. 

" For of all sad words of tongue or pen 
The saddest are these ' It might have been.' * 



28 JESUS CHRIST. 

But, of Israel too, may it be said — 

"Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies 
Deeply buried from human eyes ; 
And, in the hereafter, angels may 
Roll the stone from its grave away." * 



J. G. Whittier, "Maud Muller," fin. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE DIVINE BABE. 

" For it was no other God whom the Israelite shepherds were glorifying-, 
but Him who was announced by the Law and the Prophets, the Maker of 
all things, whom also the angels glorified" (Iren^eus iii. x. § 4. trans- 
lated by Keble). 

The country priest's home — Zacharias in the Temple — The Angel of 
promise to the priest — The Angel of promise to the Virgin — The 
meeting of the holy women — The spiritual songs — The journey to 
Bethlehem — The holy Nativity — The angelic anthem — The visit of the 
shepherds. 

The sacred scene opens in the rural home of a faithful priest 
of Israel. Most of the priests lived out of Jerusalem ; in 
Nehemiah's time about four-fifths of the whole number. 1 In 
the hill country of Judaea, probably near 2 the ancient and 
priestly Hebron, lived a righteous, i.e., pious and dutiful, priest 
and his wife, Zacharias and Elizabeth. Both were aged, both 
of Aaron's blood. Zacharias belonged to the eighth of the 
twenty-four courses, or " divisions," or "families," into which 
the priesthood had been originally divided in David's time 
(1 Chron. xxiv. 7-18). Four of these only had returned 
from exile (Ezra ii. 36-39), and had been redistributed under 
the old designations. One trouble vexed the godly home, and 
shaped many prayers. An "heritage of the Lord" (Psa. cxxvii. 3), 
even the 

" dower of blessed children " 

had been denied them. Like Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, 

1 Cf. Nehem. xi. 10-19 with Ezra ii. 36-39 and viii. 2. 

8 Not " in," as Keim, for then Hebron would have been mentioned. 



30 JESUS CHRIST. 

Manoah's wife, Hannah, the most privileged daughters of 
Israel, like her own people "until the fulness of the Gentiles 
be come in," Elizabeth was barren. 

Emphasizing this fact for its spiritual connection with after 
events, the sacred narrative bears us from the hill-side home 
into the Temple. As it was October, it must have been the 
second time that the course of Abia ministered that year, for 
to each course a week of duty was assigned. Upon what day 
Zacharias officiated we are not told. The critical hour of his 
life had come ; the more abundant answer to all who looked 
for the consolation of Israel. One was waiting to be gracious 
both to a childless mother's prayer and a Messiahless wist- 
ful people. In the chain of Divine preparation two homes 
formed the last, but not least, links— the home of the country 
priest, the home of the unwedded maiden. 

The great gates of the Holy Place had been opened. The 
three blasts of the silver trumpet had rung through the city. 
From before dawn the morning sacrifice had been prepared. 
For the third time the priests had met in the " Hall of Polished 
Stones " to draw the third lot, to choose the incensing priest, 
and the fourth lot, 1 " which designated those who were to lay 
on the altar the sacrifice and the meat offerings, and to pour out 
the drink offering." The coals from the altar of burnt-offering 
had been spread on the golden altar. The assistant priests 
had withdrawn, and left the celebrant, golden censer in hand, 
alone in the Holy Place. It was the sacred, the cherished, 
"enriching," moment in the life of any priest. Erect, before 
the altar, clad in white linen vestments " for glory and for beauty" 
(Exod. xxviii. 40), symbolizing purity, turban on head, with feet 
bare, looking towards the Veil which hung before the Holy of 
Holies, having the table of shewbread on his right, on his left 
the sevenfold flame of the golden candlestick, stood Zacharias, 
waiting the signal of the president to spread the incense upon 
the altar, and to meet his God (Exod. xxx. 6 ; xl. 26). 

When the time had come the " cloud of odours " rose up to 
heaven, mingling with the prayers of the people. The whole 
multitude without, with hands outspread, bowed down in wor- 
ship, as with the silence of heaven at the opening of the seventh 
seal. The incense offering was the most solemn phase of the 
whole sacrificial process, as "gold to stones" 2 compared with 
1 Edersbeim, "Temple," p. 137 ; Schurer i. 294 f. 2 Philo. 



THE DIVINE BABE. 3 I 

the blood offerings. Such was the fittest time for Divine 
revelation to priests. John Hyrcanus, " alone in the Temple, 
as high priest, offering incense, heard a voice that his sons had 
just then overcome Antiochus." * Farther back, David had been 
called and anointed of the prophet at the time of the family 
sacrifice. Never before, or after, did Zacharias " burn incense 
before the Lord," and offer therewith the representative inter- 
cession of all the farspread sons of Israel. And this was the 
most august burning in time, in manner, in result, ever offered. 
For on the right, or auspicious, side of the altar appeared an 
angel, and announced to the trembling priest the promise of a 
son — the forerunner of the Messiah. Gabriel, the strong man 
of God, who had about the time of the evening oblation 
announced to Daniel the yet distant march of the Prince, had 
now the mission to report His near approach. The interview 
must have lasted some minutes, for the multitude waited in 
wonder. Zacharias came out to " the top of the steps which 
led from the porch to the Court of the Gentiles." But the 
multitude left without the triple benediction, gathering from 
his signs that the dumb-struck priest had seen a vision, and in 
this way were prepared for further signs to come. 

Nine months of speechlessness in the retired rural home gave 
the priest much time for devout contemplation. Such a shock 
would leave an indelible impression and quicken the develop- 
ment of Messianic faith. A sudden blaze of light had fallen 
upon the ancient promises of Divine lore, and the symbolic 
anticipations of Temple worship. Faith supplied a key better 
than learning. The whole stream of Divine purpose, obscured, 
corrupted, and darkened indeed, but less among the Am-ha- 
aretz than in the city, must have been lighted up with new 
promise and potency of glory. Such influences at work in the 
heart of the chosen priest and his wife must have taken effect 
on the unborn child, and after his birth prepared the way, and 
in some degree accounted for, the fulness and wealth of his 
spiritual development, and the depth and maturity of his 
Messianic conception. What other home in Israel could have 
been the training ground of the prophet ? What more fitting 
nursery for a personal force, inspired by and steeped in the 
Scriptures, unindebted and indeed hostile to contemporary urban 
authority and petrified traditionalism ? The prophet did not 
1 Josephus, "Ant." xiii. 10. 3. 



32 JESUS CHRIST. 

owe all his originality and unique moral force to himself. His 
character owed its primary development to the home of a 
devout priest, blessed by an immediate Divine revelation, and 
living in the light of a recognized Divine purpose. 

St. Luke, who must have counted among his basal authorities 
the mother of the Lord, or her family and friends, before bringing 
together the two holy mothers into the foreground, passes by a 
rapid stroke from one home-centre of grace to another. While 
Elizabeth waited in glad expectancy of assured promise, the 
Angel Gabriel went on his yet greater mission to another high- 
land home. A poor, but royal born, maiden, betrothed to a 
village carpenter, with the common name of Miriam, or Mary, 
is greeted by the awful messenger. The record of the 
Annunciation is as simple and unadorned as a legend of 
Oriental imagination would have been gorgeous and hyper- 
bolical. 1 The details are as few as possible consistent with the 
historic preservation of the mystery revealed. Was she rapt 
in secret devotion at the hour of morning or evening sacrifice ? 
Was she borne on the soaring wings of Messianic desire, and 

' ' Faint for the flaming of His advent feet " ? 

There must have been some spiritual preparedness and " ripened 
receptiveness" 2 of the highest order of grace. There is a 
Divine fitness of time and place about the Epiphanies of the 
Eternal, Divine self-reverence when He would manifest His 
mysteries to the meek and pure-hearted. " Hail, favoured," or 
"graced," one. So was the flower of Israel and humanity 
approached. The words recalled the Divine message to such 
as Gideon, " the Lord is with thee," and preface the supreme 
Annunciation that she is the chosen mother of the Messiah. 
The question of maidenly simplicity follows. How ? And 
supernatural faith, never so taxed in any earthborn before or 
after, is rewarded with the promise of the overshadowing 
Spirit and power of the Highest. The Son of Mary would be 
the Son of God. An unsought sign is superadded, the sign of 
Elizabeth, her own kinswoman. 

1 See, e.g., the legends of Buddha's conception and birth, the white 
elephant entering into the side of Queen Maya as she lay on a celestial 
couch in a golden palace, &c, &c. 

2 Cf. Dorner, "System of Christian Doctrine," iii. 343, E. T. 



THE DIVINE BABE. 33 

" Yes, and to her, the beautiful and lowly, 
Mary, a maiden, separate from men, 
Camest thou nigh and didst possess her wholly, 
Close to thy saints, but thou wast closer then." * 

" The altar of the Virgin's womb was touched with fire from 
heaven." 2 "Conceived of the Holy Ghost" is an article of 
faith on a level with " born of the Virgin Mary." It was the 
function of the Creative Spirit to form the human nature of 
Jesus, as by Him " He is always born anew in the hearts of 
saints." 3 In patristic language, " this ray of God entering into 
a certain virgin, and in her womb endued with the form of 
flesh, is born Man joined together with God." 4 

There is a deep touch of nature in the narrative following, 
which is its own evidence of truthfulness. Burdened with a 
blessed and awful secret, Mary seeks the home of her who alone 
can give and exchange with her womanly and spiritual sympathy. 
Her kinswoman, Elizabeth, can verify the angel's annunciation, 
and alone in Israel can counsel her with full knowledge of her 
unique position, added to the weight of her many years of piety 
and her own share in the Advent glory of the Messiah. The 
meeting of the two saints, the young maiden, and the aged wife, 
linked in closer communion than that of their own blood, was 
one of as pure joy, as when two friends meet in the further light. 
The mother of the past, and in her the Law and Prophets of whom 
the unborn babe was the last representative, rendered homage 
to the mother of the future. Affected by the mother's exultation, 
the babe leapt in her womb in unconscious homage. Deep 
emotion, human and Divine, kindled by the breath of the Holy 
Spirit, broke into the greeting of the elder mother, and the 
sublime prophetic lyric of the younger. The holy song gathers 
up the song of Hannah and many prelusive strains of expectant 
Israel into a new and golden sheaf of praise. Poetic power 
was, and since has been, a singular gift of the women of Israel. 
Apart from its rhythmical form, the Magnificat is "a gem of 
purest ray serene." Not Hebrew, not lyrical only, but all poetry 
is the utterance of impassioned truth. " Every truth which a 
human being can enunciate, every thought, even every outward 

1 F. W. H. Myers, '* Saint Paul." 2 Bp. Alexander. 

3 Without reference to the Holy Spirit, Ep. to Diognetus xi. 

4 Tertullian, Apol. i. 21, for copious parallels vide notes s. I. in Oxford 
translation. 



34 JESUS CHRIST. 

impression, which can enter into his consciousness, may become 
poetry," J. S. Mill z has well said, " when invested with the 
colouring of joy, or grief, or pity, or affection." " All deep 
speech is song ;" 2 and this ode is deepest song of deepest speech. 
Triumphant joy is the dominant note of the Hymn of the Virgin 
Mother. Joy and thanksgiving in the kingdom of God her 
Saviour — which in the prophetic cast of the singer's vision has 
already come to the help of Israel, in fulfilment of the promises 
made to Abraham and the fathers. The exact nature of the 
incarnate kingdom has not risen into definite proportions. Song 
and singer alike looked behind and before, and belonged to both 
dispensations. 

After three months this rare communion was broken, Mary 
returned to her own home, and to Elizabeth came her time of 
fulfilment. The child was born ; mother and kin and neighbours 
rejoiced together. On the eighth day he was circumcised. Un- 
forgetful of the angel's promise, the father closes the discussion 
about the name by writing down John (Jochanan), and his 
long-sealed lips were lit with priestly-prophetic fire. The pro- 
mised horn of salvation had been raised up in David's house. 
His new-born son was to be the forerunner of the Saviour. 
The song strikes the deepest gospel notes — salvation, light, peace 
to the people of God. 

Meantime the condition of his espoused brought painful 

questions to the mind of Joseph, and suggested to the humble 

conscientious Tsaddiq of Nazareth a private divorce. His trial 

of faith ends at the third angelic annunciation, this time in a 

dream. Each link in the chain of angel ministries completes 

the one 

' ' Far-off Divine event " 

" to which " unconsciously 

" The whole creation moves.'' 

Each person within the sacred circle of the two families con- 
tributes something to the development of the Divine Advent. 

St. Luke connects the journey of Mary and Joseph to Beth- 
lehem with the decree of Augustus. It is incredible that with 
all the contemporary sources of information open to him he 
should have blundered as the negative critics aver. He was 

1 {< Essay on Poetry." 2 T. Carlyle. 



THE DIVINE BABE. 35 

aware that a census took place ten years later (Acts v. 37), and 
could not therefore have confused the two. It has been shown 
by A. Zumpt that Quirinius was probably Legate of Syria for the 
first time B.C. 4 to B.C. 1, and that this registration, begun under 
Herod, was fully effected later during his tenure of office. In 
obedience to the law, Joseph went up to the city of his forefather 
David to be enrolled, accompanied, as was natural under her 
condition, by Mary. 

The place is now called Beitlahm, inhabited by five thousand 
people industrious and well to do. Flocks and herds abound, 
and the vineyards are good and plentiful. Up the two-terraced 
limestone hills, girt with figtrees and olives, to the long grey 
village, now crowded with travellers, the two poor Galileans 
came, after passing the still existing site of the Tomb of Rachel. 
Thoughts of the faithful Ruth and the shepherd lad, David, 
must have crowded upon the mother expectant, flesh of their 
flesh, promise of their promise, the instrument of fulfilling of 
David's hope. To any child of David's house Bethlehem was 
revered and holy ground. To her, if she knew Micah's prophecy 
and had heard of the coincidental Rabbinical tradition, "little" 
(v. 2, 4) Bethlehem was the recognized place of sacred travail, 
and more than mother's joy. The frowning castle of Herod in 
the north-east, looking over to Machaerus across the Dead Sea 
would pass unheeded or lamented. 

The very inn, which may have been Chimham's (Jer. xli. 17) 
was too crowded to take them. No doors opened to the unborn 
Saviour. His own received Him not. Here the Divine Babe 
was born in the stable. After ages have honoured the place, 
and honour and dishonour it still. The Grotto of the Nativity 
is now covered by the chancel of the Greek Church, but Mahom- 
medans keep guard. The rock-cut stable where Jesus was born 
was one of countless such throughout the neighbourhood. The 
simplicity, the lowliness of the scene in every tone and detail, 
ran counter to all contemporary Jewish expectation and Oriental 
pre-conception. The birthplace of the Hero of Christianity is 
adorned with the unheroic and the commonplace. "Aufer a 
nobis pannos et dura praesepia " was the exclamation of Marcion. 
Mythical heroes have very different origins. The birth at the 
"House of Bread" 1 is typical of Jesus' life and character of 

1 But C. R. Conder, H. G. Tomkins interpret Bethlehem, as the House, 
i.e., Holy Place, of Lakhmu, the Creator, deriving the name from pre-Hebrew 



36 JESUS CHRIST. 

lowliness, simplicity, poverty, humiliation, and of its honour of 
the poor and ignorant. The cattle gave the Son of Man a 
shelter. He giveth them food and increase, and counts theirs 
amongst the groans of created nature. Shall they not partake 
of His redemptive blessing, and the glorious, more than re- 
covered, liberty of the children of a new earth ? 

Meantime hard by the Tower, Migdal Eder, now said to be 
marked by the ruins of a church built by Empress Helena, the 
shepherds were keeping night watch over the flocks intended 
for the Temple sacrifices. A sweet heavenly joyance of song 
burst over the silent hills. It was the first Christmas greeting 
of glad tidings, as of a chime of heaven's own bells, announced 
by an angel of the Lord, confirmed in responsive chorus by a 
multitude of the heavenly host. 

" Glory to God in the highest 
And on earth peace among men in whom He is well pleased." * 

' ' Sweetly over all, 
Dropping the ladder of their hymn of praise 
From heaven to earth, in silver rounds of song, 
They heard the blessed angels sing of peace, 
Goodwill to man and glory to the Lord." 2 

It was a hymn of praise which has been appropriated into the 
thanksgivings of all Eucharistic liturgies. 

Surely unknown of the shepherds the songster angels accom- 
panied their hurried steps, and did homage before the face of 
their Incarnate Lord. All the wondering words of the 
shepherds, and those to whom they spake, Mary stored up in 
her heart — a psychological touch characteristic at once of the 
mother and of the historian. One cannot but wonder whether 
any of the shepherds lived to hear the Baptist's preaching. 
Hebron lay but a few miles farther south. The devout shep- 
herds may well have been known to the family circle of Zacha- 
rias, or have heard of the happy birth which was noised about, 
and set pious country folks thinking of a coming Sign. And with 

Semitic pagan inhabitants. — " Syrian Stone Lore," p. 33, and Palestine Ex- 
ploration Society Reports, 1885, p. 112. 

1 avdoiciag, R. V., Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, &c. 

2 J. G. Whittier, "The Dream of Pio Nono," changing "he" to 
" they." 



THE DIVINE BABE. 37 

the sacrificial flocks they must have often gone the short six-mile 
journey to Jerusalem. Some may have witnessed the Temple 
cleansings. St. Luke is so careful an historian that he may 
have sought information on the spot. But without such local 
investigations the memory of the Virgin would have preserved 
all, and much more than all, the details he has handed down. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE EPIPHANIES OF THE DIVINE INFANT. 

" May to Him the spirit's kings 
Yield their choicest offerings." 

Archbishop Trench, "Silvio Pellico." 

The Epiphany of the Divine Infant in the Temple — The Epiphany of the 
Divine Infant to the Gentiles — The flight into Egypt— The return. 

The Circumcision of the Infant Christ took place on the 
eighth day. He came to fulfil all the righteousness of a true 
child of Abraham. The name assigned by the angel, Jesus 
(Jeshua), was given to the child apparently in privacy, without 
the congratulations of relatives and friends. After the Circum- 
cision the Child must have been at least forty-one days' old 
when the mother went up to the Temple for her own purification 
and the redemption of her firstborn (Lev. xii. ; Numb, xviii. 
16). It was the first visit of the Infant Saviour to His Father's 
house. The Child was presented to the priest, representatively, 
that is, to the Lord ; the redemption money was paid, five 
shekels of the sanctuary (Numb. /. c), of Tyrian weight, 
according to Rabbinic requirements, about ten to twelve 
shillings in value. 

And now the maiden-mother stood at the top of the steps 
which led up from the Court of the Women at the great gate of 
Nicanor. She had already dropped the price of the turtle doves, 
" the poor's offering," into the third of the trumpets, or the 
trumpet-shaped chests ; and as the incense rose in her sight 
from the golden altar, such a prayer as only a mother can offer 
accompanied it. The Christian " Churching of Women " is 



THE DIVINE INFANT. 39 

rather a thanksgiving, but the older name was the " ordo ad 
purificandam mulierem post partum ante ostium ecclesias," and 
all the spiritual significance of the Jewish service passes into 
the richer breath of the Christian. 

Perhaps at this moment one who had been waiting for the 
Menachem, the consolation of Israel, received the reward of 
patient waiting. Extremes met and blended. The aged saint, 
the young mother, the unconscious Babs. 

With the Divine Infant in his arms Simeon had reached the 
crown of his life. Before the wondering parents he poured out 
to the Lord his dismissal hymn of thanksgiving — a life's even- 
song to many watchers for the dawn. The rapt vision of the 
inspired singer extended to far shores and lofty heights of 
Messianic expectation. The long musings of silent prayer, 
bosomed on Messianic hope, found voice in divided accents, 
boding both light to all nations, and strife to Israel breaking in 
twain, 1 some to rise and some to fall. 

" Its voice the wise have understood ; 
They cry, ' Thy servants hear ; ' 
While some shrink farther from their good, 
Because it comes so near. " r 

His own saddened experience of life in the harlot city, his ripe 
insight into the unfruitfulness and decay of leaders and people, 
his knowledge of contemporary Messianic political religion, 
formed the material which caught the spark of the spirit of 
prophecy as he spake of a divided Israel, and prepared Mary 
/or the future of the Mater dolorosa. Such a painful forewarning 
of disappointment may have jarred upon a soul unriven with 
the reproach of which the Cross was the full and final agony. 
But after shepherd acclaims and angel carols it may not have 
been unnecessary. Mary must have been like all of her time, 
imperceptive of a suffering Messiah. 

There is a dim resemblance to this incident in the life of 
Gautama in the visit of the old sage, who after his birth pre- 
dicted that he would be a Buddha, and rejoiced to have seen 
him. 2 

1 W. Bright, D.D. 

2 Bishop Copleston on Buddhism in The Nineteenth Century, July, 
1888 ; and Professor Kellogg, " The Light of Asia and the Light of the 
World," p. 71. 



40 JESUS CHRIST. 

Another sympathetic saint joined the group. Widow Anna, the 
aged daughter of Phanuel, a member of an unreturned tribe, 
long faithful to human love, yet among those 

41 Thrice blest, whose lives are faithful prayers, 
Whose love in higher loves endure." 

She almost lived in the Temple. The burden of her unceasing 
prayer redemption. 

Two aged men, one a country priest, the other a dying saint 
in Jerusalem ; two aged women, and a poor provincial maiden ; 
all obscure in life, in station, things that are not — such are the 
dramatis fterso7i<z when the Divine scene opens. Nothing 
could be more out of keeping with the current of contemporary 
Messianic expectation, nothing less suggestive of the advent of 
a superhuman Being, nothing more natural after the spiritual 
order, nothing more flagrantly opposed to the surroundings of 
a mythical or legendary prince ! 

Three circles are now formed as Messianic nuclei. The 
circle of the Baptist's parents and friends, a priestly group ; the 
circle of Bethlehemite shepherds, a rural group ; the circle 
of elect in Jerusalem waiting under the shadow of the temple 
for redemption, a Zion group. 

After the presentation of the Infant to God in descending 
order comes His presentation to the world. The spiritual fit- 
ness alone would go far to determine the question of the priority 
of the former to the Epiphany. In contrast with the consciously 
expectant watchers of devout Jerusalem, the representatives of 
the unconscious desires of all nations approach the Infant King. 
From what province of the East the Magians came is undeter- 
mined by the sacred narrative and subsequent research. The 
name connects them with the priestly caste of Persia, who were 
spread widely over the East. In them not the kings of Sheba 
and Seba only offer gifts (Psa. lxxii. 10), but heathen religions 
which felt after God, seekers after truth in " the far countries," 
and workers of righteousness in every nation. If they were 
Persians they came of a gentle race, and one which had often 
shown favour to their Israelite subjects, as the Books of Ezra, 
Nehemiah, and Esther show. 

Was the star which led the Magians on a long and perilous 
journey natural or supernatural? Was it a special providence 



THE DIVINE INFANT. 41 

or a miracle which lightened their way to the Light of all ? Was 
their interest founded upon a scientific or a religious basis ? 
The last question may be confidently answered — upon the double 
basis of earthly and spiritual science. The former question 
is still sub judice, and invites further scientific investigation. 
The journey altogether took about two years. The birth of 
Christ took place December, 5 B.C. Two years before, the 
famous conjunction, discovered by Kepler, of the planets Jupiter 
and Saturn in the constellation Pisces took place three times. 
When a similar conjunction took place in 1603-4 a bright 
evanescent star appeared between Jupiter and Saturn. Such 
may have been the star of the Epiphany. Modern believing 
thought entirely accepts the principle of economizing miracles. 
On a priori grounds the Christian prefers the natural without 
giving up a supernatural explanation. That signs in heaven, 
however, naturally accompanied the first, as they will the second, 
Advent of the Lord of heaven and earth is true in the spiritual 
order, whether those signs were ordinary cosmical, but specially 
timed, or wholly supernatural. 

The Magi were Eastern men of science, in whose minds, as in 
much later days, astronomy and astrology were not as yet dis- 
tinct. Their religious interest in the star is partly explained by 
that mental confusion, and partly by the spread of Jewish belief. 
Jewish prophecy and tradition also, as seen in the Talmud, con- 
nected the appearance of a star with that of Messiah. They were 
virtual, or perhaps actual proselytes of the Jewish faith. The first 
question asked by the Eastern pilgrims in the Jewish capital, 
was — Where is He that is born King of the Jews ? The question 
creates a stir throughout Jerusalem, and Herod the king jealous 
of any possible rival, summons a special council, and submits 
to it in general terms the question of Messiah's birthplace. 1 
Scripture and tradition left no doubt as to the answer. The 
decisive text of Micah is Targumed, or interpreted, by St. Mat- 
thew, according to his practice in referring to Old Testament 
prophecies, in the light of complete fulfilment. " Such Targum- 
ing of the Old Testament was entirely in accordance with the 
then universal method of setting Holy Scripture before a popular 
audience." 2 

1 yevvarai indefinite present. 

2 Edersheim, i. 206, u. v, and "Prophecy and History in Relation to 
the Messiah," p. 116. 



42 JESUS CHRIST. 

After his public inquiry, Herod holds a private interview with 
the Magians with the secret intention of learning the exact age 
of the Child, and any other identifying particulars which would 
assist him to its destruction. Once more the bright pioneer 
" magnifica lingua cceli," * shone in silent eloquence before the 
rejoicing travellers, not to indicate a well-known way, but to 
reward those who by faith saw the invisible and obtained 
promises. 

The Holy Family had now found the shelter of a house. The 
humble roof is the first Palace of the royal Infant, the Eastern 
savants are the first courtiers, and the gold and frankincense 
and myrrh (comp. Isa. lx. 6) the choice products of their own 
East, the royal coronation homage. Those who have seen 
Holman Hunt's "Shadow of Death" will remember the use 
niade by the artist of the holy offerings. 

Warned by a dream not to return to their false and crafty 
friend Herod, the firstfruits of the Gentiles returned to their 
own East. The Divine Epiphany had taken place. The 
Divine rejection had already begun. 

Joseph's hasty night flight into Egypt follows in obedience 
to angelic warning. A very large number of Jewish colonists 
resided in Egypt, enjoying the rights of citizenship. In the 
north-eastern part of Alexandria a quarter was assigned to them 
" that they might lead a purer life, by mingling less with 
foreigners ; " 2 and they had scattered their homes and houses 
of prayer in all parts of the city. Among the million Jewish in- 
habitants Joseph and Mary would easily find friends, and deposit 
a germ of Messianic faith which should bear fruit after many 
days. Out of Egypt God's Son, first His people, and then their 
Representative who identified Himself with them, and spake 
long after of His Exodus (Luke ix. 31), was called in due time. 

The innocents at Bethlehem are privileged to die for the 
Innocent, foremost of the white-robed army. Some score or 
more in a small town were sacrificed to Herod's jealous wrath, 
unrecorded amidst bloodier massacres on the page of Josephus, 
but recalling to the mind of the sacred historian, the lamentation 
of Rachel, comfortless mother in Israel, over exiled and slaugh- 
tered children. 

Divine retribution swiftly follows. The blood of thirty-seven 

1 St. Augustine. 2 Josephus, " Bell. Jud." ii. 18. 7. 



THE DIVINE INFANT. 43 

years' reign of murder and crime called for vengeance. Herod 
died at Jericho, almost within hearing of the rejoicings of the 
people. 

Another angelic intimation turns Joseph's steps homewards. 
Archelaus, the elder brother of Herod Antipas, the nominee of 
Herod's fourth will, had been proclaimed king by the army, and 
his accession under the title of Ethnarch had already been, or 
was afterwards, confirmed by Augustus. Joseph intending pro- 
bably to live at Bethlehem is by another angelic warning 
directed to Galilee. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE DIVINE BOY. THE DIVINE YOUTH. 

" Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ; 
His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
The silence that is in the starry sky, 

The sleep that is among the lonely hills." 
Wordsworth, "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle." 

Nazareth — Physical environment — Home influence and education — 
Epiphany of the Divine Boy — The Father's house — The tender Plant 
— The Divine Young Man — The simple home — Experience of men- 
Communion with nature — God's silences of preparation. 

Nazareth, the " watcheress " or " protectress," lay white on the 
bosom of the surrounding hills. The horizon of the town is 
limited to the smooth bare limestone hill-tops. But from the sum- 
mit of the hill above the eye swept over a wide, a varied, and a 
stirring scene of beauty. To the north rose, tier above tier, 
the mountains of Upper Galilee, the three-peaked Hermon's 
hoary crown ; closer, gleaming Sepphoris, now Sefmrieh, some 
four miles off, "the city set on a hill," made by Herod Antipas 
the capital of Galilee ; and many of the towns of populous 
Galilee, stretching to "the hollow bay of Acre with its white 
circle of surf." Hard by in the east the cone of Tabor round 
which the many coloured caravans would wind ; afar the long 
rough ridges of the Bashan mountains and the Jordan valley; 
westward, but twelve miles, the long-wooded reach of Carmel's 
prophetic hill, " as seen through a pure atmosphere, almost 
within touch," l away over its ridges to the south-west the far 
flash of " the great sea " dinted with sails ; southward the rich 

1 A. Henderson. 



THE DIVINE BOY. 45 

historic plain of Esdraelon, field of many battles, to the moun- 
tains of Gilboa on the east, and the hills of Samaria on the 
north. 

Modern Nazareth lies "as in a hollow cup," 1 lower down 
upon the hill, as is indicated by the position "of the old cisterns 
and tombs." 2 It is a flourishing town, and most of its six 
thousand inhabitants are Christian. The Virgin's Fount, 
then, as now, a favourite resort of the youth, is the one hallowed 
spot. The fair beauty of the women, the bright coloured 
dresses of the inhabitants are traits which may be a pre- 
Christian survival ; the quarrelsome violence, which is still a 
Nazarene characteristic, may have prompted the olden question 
of Nathanael. But of buildings nothing remains of our Lord's 
time. 

Nazareth was a town, not a village. Its population numbered, 
probably, at least ten thousand. 3 From Ptolemais, the port 
of communication with Rome, the distance was six hours ; from 
the Sea of Galilee, five ; from Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, 
till Tiberias rose into greater importance, one hour and a half. 
Nazareth was near several caravan commercial routes, one of 
the three which led from Acco to Damascus passed through 
it. Merchants and travellers to and from Damascus, the Medi- 
terranean, the Sea of Galilee, Scythopolis, must have passed 
along its terraced way or within easy distance. From Jerusalem 
the journey was but three days. 

While it was not a mere highland village, neither was it a 
great commercial or social centre. It must have escaped the 
paganizing civilization of Herod. No theatres, baths, temples, 
were there. The atmosphere was Jewish ; the hereditary in- 
fluences were all Jewish. Under a purely Jewish and Galilean 
environment Jesus was brought up. His breeding was un- 
contaminated by Greek elements and unwarped by the 
dominant Pharisaism of Judaea. 

The natural surroundings must have asserted their influence 
upon the natural development of the Divine Child. Children 
have little conscious sense of the beauties of form and colour, 
of light and shade in scenery, little of historic imagination in 
places of national interest. But they artlessly delight in the 

1 " Cruise of the Bacchante," ii. 675. 

2 Conder, "Tent Life," i. 138 foil. 

3 Merrill, fifteen or twenty thousand. 



46 JESUS CHRIST. 

flowered meadows, and the verdurous hills, and their lively 
fancy weaves a hundred tales from nature's picture-book. The 
charismata of the "living garment of God" can never have 
been lost on the sensitive spirit, the observant eye, the dutiful 
heart of the Child. How many walks upon the Nazarene 
hillsides must have gladdened the young heart ! The bright 
spring flowers picked, the red anenomes, the pink phlox, the 
rock roses among the commonest, who could count? Many 
pages of Jewish history lay an open self-explaining Bible on the 
surrounding plains and hills. An intelligent, a patriotic mother 
in Israel, like the singer of the Magnificat, could never have 
forgotten for herself, or for her child pupil, the histories writ 
large upon the neighbouring battlefields. The names of Gideon, 
of Deborah and Barak, of Saul and Samuel and Jonathan, of 
Elijah, of Jehu, whispered from the very ground. Childhood 
drinks in the sunshine of life, but the dark shadows are hidden 
from unsuspecting innocence protected by parental care. 

Of all the early factors in His human development the home 
influence must have been supreme. The homes of Israel were 
the brightest spot, the love of children the tenderest chord, the 
respect for women a most honourable mark of Jewish life. This 
is abundantly provable from the Talmud. 1 " All the verses of 
Scripture that spoke of flowers and gardens were applied to 
children and schools. ' Do not touch Mine anointed ones, and 
do My prophets no harm.' * Mine anointed ' were school children, 
and ' My prophets' their teachers. The highest and most exalted 
title which they bestowed in their most poetical flights upon 
God Himself was that of Pedagogue of Man." So in regard 
to women. "It is woman alone through whom God's blessings 
are vouchsafed to a house. She teaches the children, speeds 
the husband to the place of worship and instruction, welcomes 
him when he returns, keeps the house godly and pure. 2 'A good 
wife,' says the son of Sirach, ' is a great gift of God to him 
that fears God is she given ' " (Ecclus. xxvi. 1-4). 3 

1 E. Deutsch, " Remains," p. 147. 

2 Cf. Saadi, the popular Persian poet, translated by Col.W. Mackinnon — 

3 E. Deutsch, " Remains," p. 54. 

"A handsome, loving, chaste, obedient wife, 

Maketh a man a king, though poor in life ; . . . 
Surely God's favour is on him bestowed 
Whose wife makes glad and prospers his abode." 



THE DIVINE BOY. 47 

The love of children breaks through the arid technicalities of 
the Talmud like a strain of sweet music. The mother is the 
household queen. The reign of motherhood was more sacred 
under the Law than elsewhere. Under the old covenant there 
were Sarahs and Rachels, Hannahs and Susannas. The word- 
portrait of King Lemuel (Prov. xxxi.) cannot wholly have been 
an ideal one. The Gospels and Acts are still richer in examples 
and types of holy womanhood. Whatever of tenderness and 
moral beauty and devout faith there was among the chosen 
daughters of Israel must have signalized the mother of the 
Lord. Whatever of motherhood that is most human yet most 
Divine Christian homes have known, must have been present 
in the first and best Christian home. The influence of mother 
over child, the responsive love, inexpressible, between the 
bearer and the born, must here have attained its full per- 
fection. 

Nor must we forget the father, whose especial duty it was to 
teach his child the Law, and whose humility and conscientious- 
ness are apparent under and by reason of the gospel silence, 
and whose title to sainthood has been acknowledged by grateful 
Christendom. Modern ethical thought assigns a supreme place 
to reverence. " Reverence towards goodness, which . . . proves 
to be identical with devotion to God." * " This apex and crown 
of human goodness" 2 cannot have failed to mark the character 
of the thoughtful son of the house of David and the nursing 
father of Messiah. Believers in the unbroken virginity of the 
maiden mother have always seen in the faithful Joseph an 
example of purity. Graces so fragrant as these may well have 
been privileged to assist in the nurture and teaching of the 
holy Boy. The sacredness and the beauty of family life has 
never been realized as fully as in the present day. The family 
circle at Nazareth at once suggests and sanctions the highest 
family ideals. Family love formed a very important factor in 
the expansion of the faith, as the family of the faithful spread 
from one domestic centre to another, federating all in one family 
of God. 

That Christ was taught by His mother the Shema, or elemen- 
tary Jewish creed, as soon as He could speak, that the Psalms 
were His child's hymn-book, the Law, the Torah, the object of 

1 J. Martineau, " Types of Ethical Theory," ii. p. 206. z Ibid. 



48 JESUS CHRIST. 

His sacred study from five or six years of age, is beyond doubt ; 
for such was the education of every Jewish child of dutiful 
parents. From first to last it was religious. The Jewish child 
lived and moved and had his being in a religious environment. 
Till ten years of age Jesus must have studied the Bible. That 
He passed on according to the usual course to the study of the 
Mishnah may be doubted. His knowledge of the traditions of 
the elders may have come only from the experience of its appli- 
cation to every day and every hour of Jewish life. We may be 
permitted to doubt whether the pure fountains of revealed 
truth were ever sullied by Mishnic admixture in the early home 
teachings and self-instructions of the Forerunner or the Mes- 
siah. 

Whatever intellectual education the Boy Jesus received, His 
spiritual training must have been the first care. The Bible 
cannot have been a mere lesson-book. " From His intimate fami- 
liarity with Holy Scripture " (and that in the original Hebrew) 
" in its every detail, we may be allowed to infer that the home 
of Nazareth, however humble, possessed a precious copy of the 
sacred volume in its entirety." x The services in the synagogue 
upon the Sabbath day, and perhaps on the week-days, the 
family worship, the private prayer, were absolutely real to the 
Holy Family. The inward history of that soul, the functions of 
the unseen life within, the communion with the Father — these 
are subjects past the thought of sinners ! In all these ways 
known and unknown, the Divine Child increased with the 
increase of God. 

The higher intellectual and moral currents of the time can 
hardly have left Nazareth uninfluenced. The tide of human 
thought and national feeling sweeps into the most secluded 
regions. 

But whether Joseph was a cultivated man there is no evi- 
dence of judging. Culture to a Palestinian Jew consisted 
entirely in the knowledge of the Law. If he had any acquaint- 
ance with the later Jewish literature, their study began, con- 
tinued, and ended in the glorification of the Law. This is true 
of the native history, such as i Maccabees ; of the later Psalms, 
such as the Maccabean (Psa. lxxiv., lxxix, cxlix. ; perhaps 
lxxxiii. and lxxxiv.), the literature already noticed in chapter 

1 Edersheim, i. 234. 



THE DIVINE BOY. 49 

iii. From these he would have learned and taught first and 
last, in every tone of the moral scale, the fear of God. The love 
of God was an idea fully developed only in the teaching of 
Christ. The spirit breathed in all these writings is pure, 
genuine Pharisaic Judaism. It is clear that if Christ imbibed 
any such teaching from Joseph or other Nazarene elders, all 
that was partial, all that was typically Pharisaic, was rejected 
by the pure and healthy mind, while what was true and 
spiritual, what was scriptural and universal, was appropriated 
and assimilated. 

That Jesus was a solitary Child seems unnatural to suppose. 
Compulsory education was the law of the land. If the law was 
in force in Galilee, He must have attended the national. syna- 
gogue school, and formed one of a circle round the Chazzan, or 
minister, of the synagogue. As there was no pride, singularity, 
or exclusiveness about Him whose delight it was to be with the 
sons of men, He must have joined in childish sports with His 
schoolfellows and neighbours and foster-brothers, 1 as well as in 
childish lessons. That He showed unselfishness and conscien- 
tiousness, a bright and loving spirit, an open heart at home and . 
out of doors, that He honoured His adopted father and His 
mother, that He actively assisted them in the simple duties of 
the household, as age and strength permitted, goes without 
saying; that He throughout His life enjoyed good health and 
bodily strength seems implied in the sacred memoirs. 

Christ passed through all the stages of life to redeem and 
consecrate all. He was a real Child as well as a real Man. 
He spake as a child, thought as a child, understood as a child. 
The history of the Divine Childhood is summed up in the words 
of St. Luke (ii. 40, 52). There was a natural development of 
body, soul, and spirit. None of the Nazarene townsfolks 
remembered or recorded any extraordinary feats of mind or 
body on His part. As upon Samuel, the grace of God was 
upon Him. It was a permanent, not a special or official, endow- 
ment. The attractiveness of transparent innocence, the beauty 
of ideal holiness, drew ever the increasing favour of men. The 
Divineness of child-life and of the "eternal childhood," which, 
with all other perfections, " exists in God," 2 was here exhibited. 
The Epiphany of the Divine Boyhood follows in nature and in 

1 I.e., Joseph's sons by a former wife. 
* Rev. H. N. Grimley. 

5 



50 JESUS CHRIST. 

spirit the Epiphany of the Divine Infancy. The darkness lifts 
for a moment, and the light breaks upon a boyish figure and 
character. He is seen in His Father's house. The act is 
typical. It is the Epiphany of the Divine Boyhood. 

At the time when Jesus went up to the feast, Quirinius was 
Legate, or governor, of the Roman province of Syria ; Archelaus 
was in banishment in Gaul under Roman displeasure. Coponius, 
the first of the Roman procurators, was there. There, too, at 
his official duties, must have been Ananos, the son of Seth, the 
high priest Annas. It was the spring of A.D. 9. Joseph, as a 
conscientious Jew, and Mary, out of self-imposed obligation or 
from the example set by those women of Hillel's school who 
went up once a year, were in the habit 1 of going up to the holy 
city. For the first time the Child accompanied them. He was 
not yet son of the Torah, legally of age, but wanting a year 
only, according to the custom of the time, and perhaps with 
other boys of His age or kin He went. If His mother had 
never gone before, she would not have left Him to go without her. 

The songs of Zion must have cheered the pilgrim march, 
most of all the Psalms of Ascent, such as 

" I was glad when they said unto me, 
' Let us go to the house of Jehovah.' 
Our feet stand at last 
Within thy gates, O Jerusalem." a 

Many children entering their teens are vividly sensitive to 
religious ideas. The first journey to the city where God had 
set His Name, where all Jewish worship and life and history had 
centred for generations, must have been an epoch in the life of 
any young Israelite. Add to that the sacred purpose, the Divine 
and national feast, the holy place, the house of Jehovah — above 
all, the Personality of the Child-pilgrim, Son of God and Son of 
David — and the lingering in the Father's house, the naive ques- 
tion of the conscious Son of the Highest seems strictly natural. 
Looking back through the after-lights, we ask, not — could it 
have been ? but could it not have been ? 

Some have supposed that at this visit He first realized His 
Divine Sonship : the profound Dorner, 3 e.g., " it flashed upon 

1 avafiaivovTtov tense. 2 Psa. cxxii. (Cheyne). 

3 " System of Christian Doctrine," iii. 365. 



THE DIVINE BOY. 5 1 

Him in the holy city, in the midst of types of Him, He knew 
it also to be His mission, to be about what was His Father's. 
God is to Him Father in a special sense ; therefore He also 
knew Himself in a special sense to be His Son. And to assert 
and carry through this consciousness He knew to be His 
mission. He, this man, must remain in the Divine home." It 
may be so. The occasion was fitting. But considering the 
reality and rapidity of religious conviction in children of pious 
parents and devout environment, it seems not unnatural to 
suppose that His consciousness of His Divine Nature had 
begun as early as His intelligent and self-intelligible conscious- 
ness of God. Once knowing God as a Father, could He have 
failed to know God as His Father in an unique sense ? 

But we are here on the edge of mysteries. The sources of 
knowledge are in any case mysterious ; and in the case of Christ 
most mysterious. But against the supposition that He only 
used this language in the sense that any child of Israel could 
have used it, and that He did not arrive at His Divine con- 
sciousness till His baptism, we enter every protest, theological 
and psychological. 

It was the third day of the feast, and the two following ones, 
that the Child Jesus was at once a pupil and a teacher of the 
Rabbis. On the first two days attendance at the Temple was 
compulsory. The Paschal meal had been eaten, the Chagigah 
offered, and " the first ripe barley reaped and brought to the 
Temple, and waved as the Omer of first flour before the Lord." * 
Joseph and Mary had begun their homeward journey. They 
rested, according to tradition, at Beeroth (Birek), nine miles 
north of Jerusalem, spent the second day on the return, and the 
third in finding Him. In some part or other of the vast precinct 
of the Temple, perhaps on the Chel, or Terrace, where the 
Temple Sanhedrin on feast days gave popular instruction, 
amongst the Rabbis, sat the young questioner. There was 
nothing very unusual in the fact, for the precocious Josephus 
at the age of fourteen was consulted by the high priests and 
principal men. But there was everything extraordinary about 
His intelligence. He was at home. He spake of His own, as 
the great thinker of Alexandria said, himself a boy of most rare 
promise, " Interrogabat magistros, et quia respondere non- 
poterant, ipse his, de quibus interrogaverat, respondebat. . . . 
1 Edersheim, i. 246. 



52 JESUS CHRIST. 

Interrogabat, inquam, magistros, non ut aliquid disceret, sed 
ut interrogans erudiret." x But it was impossible for the Messiah 
to remain in Jerusalem. Rabbinism would have choked Him. 
The inevitable breach would have come earlier. Obedient at 
any sacrifice He returned to the simple home and parental 
supervision. The light of the evangel is turned off. Silence 
falls round the Divine home ; the figure of the Messiah is hidden 
for eighteen years. One welcome word tells us of natural, 
intellectual, spiritual growth (Luke ii. 52). 

He grew up as a tender plant on a wholly Jewish soil, 
with nothing between Him and the pure air and light of 
heavenly grace but the better native surroundings of the day. 
His mental and spiritual development was natural, not artificial ; 
healthy, not forced. Of His loving fidelity to Nature, His keen- 
ness of observation, His scientific accuracy of description, 
sufficient evidence is supplied by His parables and allegories. 
The freshness and originality of His mind from a human point 
of view sprang from the immediate perfection of His realization 
of fact in all departments, and the absence of the technical 
lore and pedantic traditionalism of the schools. Whatever 
" bias," in Spencerian language, He had, whatever hereditary 
predispositions played upon Him, were conceived and born in 
Jewish thought, in Jewish devotion, in Jewish Scripture, in 
Jewish family love and honour, in Jewish Messianic expectation 
nursed through long years of suffering and decay, sweetened 
and purified by trial and discipline, and lighted up with secret, 
undying hope. 

Neither was Nazareth a secluded town, nor the life of Jesus 
a secluded life. Life in the East is always and altogether public. 
He increased in favour with men, and cannot, therefore, have 
isolated Himself from the townspeople. Simple and reverent, 
honest and laborious, loving and faithful, true and just, of 
transparent innocency and guiielessness, He did not fail to win 
affection and respect. Into all that was honest, pure, lovely, 
and of good report, He would enter freely and heartily. From 
all that was the contrary He would shrink. His education for 
affairs was derived from His experience of men and things. 
The realities of life are as appreciable on a small as on a large 
scale. His pure spirit was sensitive to the touch of truth as 
the leaves to the breath of spring, wherever it was met. His 
1 Origen, in Luc, Horn, xviii. xix. (954, 955). 



THE DIVINE YOUTH. 53 

perfect insight into the ways of men's hearts, and the springs 
of human conduct, was brought on its human side by the 
suffering shocks of contact with pure evil, or mixed good, and 
by the joyous sympathy which flows from love of all that is 
right. The Christ in youth was sober-minded, strong in 
grace. He fled youthful lusts, He followed righteousness. He 
was irreproachable in conduct. Not even calumny and the 
fierce light of after-criticism could rake up any ashes of scandal 
from the pure fire of that white young life. More pious and 
devout and simple than a Samuel, fairer and braver than a 
David, purer and fuller of the milk of human kindness than a 
Joseph, He was at all times and in all companies the pattern 
youthful Israelite, the Ideal Young Man. At home, eating and 
drinking, working at the carpenter's bench, worshipping on the 
housetop or in the synagogue, keeping feast and fast, with the 
maidens as sisters, with the young men as brothers, Jesus 
Christ was the same in character, as in after-days of public 
ministry, as He is now, to-day, and for ever. 

The outward circumstances of His Nazarene life may be 
briefly noticed. The kind of house in which He lived is still 
found in a perfect state. "They are generally square, of 
different sizes, the largest, however, not thirty feet square, and 
have one or two columns down the centre to support the roof, 
which appears to have been flat as in the modern Arab houses. 
The walls are about two feet thick, built of masonry or of loose 
blocks of basalt. There is a low doorway in the centre of one 
of the walls, and each house has windows twelve inches high 
and six wide." " Sometimes "the house was divided into four 
chambers." 

Daily food and clothing were simple and sufficient. He wore 
in manhood the national turban, probably white ; and tunic of 
one piece, and therefore valuable ; over that the talith (i/«moi'), 
loose and flowing, whether white, or the common blue, or white 
with brown stripes, with the Tsitsith blue or white fringes at the 
four corners. 2 

The political movements of the day in a people so intensely 
national as the Jews, in whose eyes patriotism was a religion, 

1 L. Oliphant, " Haifa," p. 231. 

2 Stapfer, ch. x. p. 100; but the white of the Transfiguration was the 
whiteness of intense colour, and does not imply that His garment was not 
white before. 



54 JESUS CHRIST. 

and whose politics were summed up in the one word, the 
Messiah, cannot have failed to excite the interest of Nazarenes. 
How seriously, how intently, the political horizon must have 
been watched by parents who shared in some degree the ideas 
of the time respecting the political character and national 
mission of the Messiah and kept to themselves the tremendous 
secret ! Christ Himself may have thought out some of the 
political problems of the day, as travelling merchant from the 
west or returning priest from Jerusalem brought in news. Such 
questions as afterwards confronted Him, as the moral obliga- 
tions of taxation, the respective duties to the Roman govern- 
ment and its representatives, and to the national government and 
its representatives, were settled in the court of His private life 
and conscience, before He was publicly required to state His 
principles. His kingdom was not of this world, but this world 
was of His kingdom and of His love. 

Years brought experience of men ; increasing knowledge 
increasing sorrow, increasing desire to take away the evil. As 
lives and characters were gauged by Him, as hollowness and 
unreality, corruption and hypocrisy, dropped their disguise 
before His open gaze, as wickedness and vice and all the 
wrongful dealing of men burned like fire against the spotless 
white of His soul, as hearts lay open before Him, if He willed, 
He took the measure of men, of His own people, of His own 
generation. If His voluntary exinanition limited Him to the 
ordinary media of human knowledge there is a moral insight, 
peculiar to holiness of a high order, exemplified in the history 
of saints, which even upon a purely human basis must have 
distinguished Him above all His holy offspring, which must 
have vibrated to every breath of good, and jarred at every 
shock of evil. Nor is life on a large scale, in populous 
centres, amongst seas of human activity, necessary to breadth 
of view and intensity of perception. On the contrary, indi- 
viduals, where fewer, offer more points for attraction or repulsion. 
The microscopic view of life becomes possible. Characters, 
individual forces, are more easily measurable. The village 
Hampden or the village tyrant are more appreciable by their 
nearness. In the thriving country town Jesus saw types of 
every contemporary class and interest. The after experiences 
of life do not seem to have stirred many surprises in Him. He 
knew what was in man from the intuitive insight of perfection. 



THE DIVINE YOUTH. 55 

He knew what was in man from the accumulated experience of 
pain, and the intensified sympathy of an irrepressible stream of 
love. If any ambitions presented themselves to Him from 
without — from within they never could come — from flattering 
friends or home Messianic misapprehensions, they made no 
mark upon a heart cased in the panoply of God. Experience 
and observation formed the ethical sources of His inductive 
knowledge of men. The mysterious powers which were in- 
volved in His Divine nature are unknowable in their intrinsic 
energies. 

Friends cannot have been wanting to the family circle. The 
town may have had its Simeon and Anna, its holy and humble 
of heart, its righteous according to the law without self-righteous- 
ness ; but we know of no Nazarene apostles, or even disciples, 
except His long unbelieving " brethren." Such an absence is 
conspicuous. 

During these silent years He may have been shaping His 
life plan ; if the comparison may be made without irreverence, 
like Milton, ''late choosing and beginning late," with conscious 
self-education. But it seems more becoming to think that He 
lived faithful to the simple light of everyday duty, turning every 
detail to heavenly account, waiting patiently for the Divine 
summons to wider fields of action and higher " vocation and 
ministry." 

Upon Jesus Christ's youthful high communings with Nature 
it is needless to dwell. It has ceased to be the monopoly of 
artists, poets, physicists to taste the sacramental gifts of Nature. 
That it has so ceased is due to Him who opened the book of 
the Gospel of Nature. Nature to Him spoke in most melodious 
tones of the fair beauty of the Lord ; His righteousness, His all- 
providential care, His wisdom, His power in the things that 
were made were read as in an open book. In St. Paul we see a 
man of culture and city tastes who found in nature a gospel 
which supplied his new faith with the lofty analogies of the 
resurrection body and the starlike in glory— a gospel muffled to 
his unconverted ears. In Christ we have One whose eyes nor ears 
required opening to a Presence in the summer hills and flowers 
or the wintry frosts and snows. The Old Testament is full of 
Nature's worship. The Psalms, which were Christ's special 
manual of devotions, in every cadence spoke of and from the 
works of His hands to the Maker. To Christ is due as dis- 



56 JESUS CHRIST. 

coverer the first revelation of the truth of the unity of Nature in 
God, the community of Nature and human nature, their inter- 
dependence, their common dependence upon the Personal God. 
To Him, then, " the meanest flower that blows " upon the Naza- 
rene hillsides brought thoughts not only " too deep for tears," 
but passing human understanding — thoughts of His Father's 
love and power and wisdom, thoughts of man's unlove, im- 
potence, folly, misery, 1 sin, which Nature as truly mirrors, 
and as pathetically expresses with her thousand shadows as 
with her ten thousand lights she proclaims the Light of the 
world. 

The silences of God are not the silences of inactivity, of in- 
difference, of oblivion. They are the silence of infinite prepara- 
tive industry, of the march of myriad evolutions, slow and sure 
and invisible. There was the silence before the call of Abraham ; 
there was the silence of heavens as brass during the travail of 
Egyptian bondage ; there was the silence as of the coldness and 
disappointment of an outraged friend before the call of Samuel ; 
there was the long pre-Messianic silence after the last of the 
prophets had lifted up his voice in promise of the messenger, 
Elijah the prophet, before the great and terrible day of the 
Lord ; there was the silence of the prophet-priest in the 
solitudes of the deserts, before he put the trumpet to his lips 
and sounded the alarm ; there was the silence *of the Messiah 
Himself, gathering up the forces of His soul for the day of 
battle, storing the spiritual sinews of war for the superhuman 
strife, awaiting the Divine mandate and the trumpet ring of His 
human forerunner ; there was the mysterious and most for- 
bearing silence of God while the Son of Man waged His single- 
handed warfare with all the accumulated heritages of lies, the 
armed fortresses of evil, the concentrated organized hosts of the 
prince and potentate of ill. And the wondering, scarcely broken 
silence of the angels ! And the Divine silence still remains in 
the majesty of self-reserve till it is burst by the trump of the 
angel. 

But these silences of ages have been the preludes to utterance. 
There has been neither speech, nor language, till the fulness of 

1 Cf. J. S. Mill's hard reading of Nature in the famous passage in " The 
Three. Essays on Religion ; " but it is only of one side of Nature, and to 
a Christian suggests the redemption and resurrection of Nature implied 
in that of human nature through Christ. 



THE DIVINE YOUTH. 57 

each time — till God spake and it was done. Busy, working 
lives of men, ye need the golden silences of patient, teachable 
prayer and preparatory suffering devotion above all needs of 
this work-a-day world if ye would find out God's purpose, fulfil 
His ends, and do His work ! 

Years passed by over an uneventful life and a silent heaven. 
The people called Him by their wants and miseries, the family 
of sinners called Him by their sins, the prayers and desires of 
thousands who had gone to Sheol disappointed called Him, the 
spiritual Messianic watchers for their satisfaction, the deluded 
and debased for Uieir correction called Him, " the world with 
all its ideals called Him ; " r but His Heavenly Father called 
Him not, and He waited His hour. By such a discipline of 
waiting and patient endurance God had tried Abraham, had 
tried His people Israel, tries His faithful for their hour and 
His. 

How the Christ prayed in flawless prayer, how His human 
spirit held communion with the Divine, is unwritable in any 
gospel, and unthinkable but on the knees. The patience and 
faith of the saints had been tried, had been tasked ; and the 
Saint Himself of saints revealed more than all, and bore much 
more than He revealed. 

But it may be without presumption inferred that He prayed 
the customary prayer of the adult Israelite. Morning and 
evening He would have recited the Shema, or devotional creed, 
derived from Deut. vi. 4-9, xi. 13-21, and Numb. xv. 37-41. 
Morning, afternoon, at the time of the Minchah offering, and 
evening, even in childhood, the Shemoneh Esreh, " the prayer " 
consisting of eighteen, and in its final shape of nineteen, Bera- 
chahs or benedictions. The latter form indicates how large a 
place thanksgiving filled in pure Jewish devotion. The duty 
so often insisted upon by St. Paul was doubtless an improved 
survival of his Jewish days, and must have been perfectly 
fulfilled by the perfect Son of Abraham. The usual grace 
(Berachoth), too, would be said before and after meals from 
childhood without attention to the petty and complex regula- 
tions of Rabbis, such as — " If the blessing has been pronounced 
over a side dish before the meal, the side dish after the meal is 
exempt." 

1 Lan^e in a different context. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE PROPHET BAPTIST. THE DIVINE BAPTISM. 

"The brave strong spirit of the man supports him. So mighty is the 
source of strength within him, that, as the prospects of the present darken, 
the prophecy of the future grows more splendid in his soul ; as earth sinks 
into shadow heaven grows more radiant around him " (J. A. Symonds, 
" Dante in Exile "). 

John in the Wilderness — The Great Renunciation — The Cry of the King- 
dom — The Flow of Penitents — Jesus Baptized — Why? 

The things that Jesus learned, the things that He suffered 
especially, in the country town, with all its narrowness, folly, sin, 
were the school for the Messianic venture into the public field. 
That venture of faith was now at hand. 

The silence of Israel was broken by a voice as startling as if 
one of the old prophets had risen again trumpet-tongued. It 
was the cry in the wilderness of the new prophet. His life, like 
Christ's, had been a hidden fire. He had retired to the desert 
at the imperious bidding of the Voice within, even in boyhood, 
when strong surrenders and great renunciations are by rare 
spirits only, and then but seldom made. Spiritual strength was 
his great mark. 

The forerunner had retired into the desert in boyhood. But 
the child life must have begun to take shape before he left the 
priestly home. Perhaps the death of his aged parents was the 
immediate cause of his going into the wilderness, which lay 
south of Jericho and the Jordan fords. There he abode like 
other solitaries in outward life, but in the secret burden and 
glory of his soul alone and unapproachable. The principal 
factor in his home and desert education was the study of the 



THE PROPHET BAPTIST. 59 

prophets. If a child can be brought up in a pious home for a 
missionary career, if a prince's son can be trained for high 
station, if a philosopher's child may be steeped with learning, 
like John Stuart Mill from infancy, the son of the Jewish priest 
could be prepared by holy discipline and many-fountained 
prayer to full consciousness of his Divine mission and venture. 
Deliberate preparation for a special purpose constitutes a tech- 
nical education. A technically prophetic education in the lives 
and words of Israel's prophets would stamp into the sensitive 
heart of the child of Aaron an intensity of conviction, an ab- 
sorption of desire, an openness to the fires of inspiration, an 
irrefragable independence of extra Scriptural authorities and 
worldly ranks, which should characterize a shaft polished for 
Divine aim (Isa. xlix. 2, 3), a mouth like a sharp sword, a life 
long hidden in the shadow of His hand, a servant of the Lord 
in whom He would be glorified. 

He was an ascetic, but neither in dress, nor food, nor rule, 
still less in spirit or in teaching, was he an Essene. He belonged 
to no religious school. But he had made the great renunciation 
demanded of founders of schools in the East and Reformers. 
In the wild steppes of the desert nothing came between his 
soul and God. To a purely spiritual atmosphere he was 
acclimatized by a long specialization to prophetic work, 
resulting in a character altogether unworldly. To every local 
or national interest he was dead save one. To every movement 
from or towards a spiritual direction he was as tremulously 
sensitive as a ministering spirit. Asceticism hardens and 
ossifies some natures, but others it intensifies for spiritual im- 
pact or impression. Such a man as the priestly son of Zacha- 
rias, trained in a long course of spiritual self-discipline, whose 
meat and drink had been the words of the prophets and the 
promises of God, was a fully adjusted organ for Divine commu- 
nications, and one who corresponded with popular ideals, not 
in Judaea only, but all over the East. Had he willed the 
prophet John might have been numbered among the Gautamas, 
the Confuciuses of the world. He might have been a false 
Messiah, and a " lost leader." 

No mere force of genius, spiritual or intellectual, nor any 
fulfilment of popular ideals, can account for the depth of the 
impression made by the Baptist. The Acts (xviii. 25 ; xix. 3) 
show that his influence, in the course of a quarter of a century, 



60 JESUS CHRIST. 

spread as far as remote proconsular Asia. And his name 
became even a "watchword of direct antagonism" and rival 
Messiahship. 1 And Josephus, with his anti-Messianic bias, 
himself is a witness to the popular influence he wielded. 

Two facts account for the Baptist's success. First, his per- 
sonality. Secondly, his opportunity. The man himself was 
"a spiritual splendour," 2 a moral force of extraordinary momen- 
tum. The ante-natal prayers, the long discipline of waiting, the 
vivid realization of his prophetic vocation growing with his 
growth, the stream of self-consecrating prayer which bore him 
on the tide of God's undisappointed will, had borne their proper 
fruit. He was the one man of his time who could stand upon 
the naked truth of the Bible, and knew that he was of the 
spiritual lineage of the Samuels and the Elijahs. Such a power 
within him, such memories behind him, such a special assurance 
and conviction, stamped him as a strong man of God, a prophet, 
and more than a prophet. 

But great characters may tower in unrecognized oblivion. 
Great men require great circumstances. Had not the times 
been ripe the Baptist might have been a volcano in the desert. 
But it was the time of times for making an impression. The cry of 
the kingdom of God went to the breathing heart of the people. 
What was this kingdom of God but the ruling idea of the old 
covenant, the beginning, the middle, the end of its rites, insti- 
tutions, laws ; the promise to the fathers, the passionate 
dream of the prophets, the unsatisfied desire of a people whom 
past sufferings and exiles, whom present subjection, never 
crushed out of their pride as the people of God ? Everywhere 
the political and religious atmosphere was charged with the 
dea, actual or latent. Consciously or unconsciously, directly 
or indirectly, men were looking for, or groping after a Divine 
kingdom. Pharisees and Essenes were discussing it in their 
schools. The Book of Enoch most, and the other apocalypses 
expressed and encouraged the same aspiration. St. John took 
up the conception, but in a different sense. He had derived his 
thought from the Messianic prophets. He was driven by the 
Spirit of prophecy into the wilderness. He brooded over his 
Isaiah till substance and spirit, tone and temper, passed into 
him. But for Stephen there had not been a Paul. But for an 
Isaiah there had not been a John the Baptist. Although he 
1 Bp. Lightfoot, " Colossians," p. 403. 2 Dante. 



THE PROPHET BAPTIST. 6l 

was distinctly affirmed by Christ to be the second Elias pre- 
dicted by Malachi (iv. 5) he did not admit the title himself. 
Perhaps he did not think he had risen to the spirit and power of 
that prophet, and had fallen short of his high vocation. True 
greatness, true holiness, are humble and self-depreciative. In 
this, as in all respects, John contrasted with the Hillels and 
Shammais of the time, and of the time to come. 

" Still, some few 
Have grace to see Thy purpose, strength to mar 
Thy work by no admixture of their own, 
Limn truth not falsehood, bid us love alone, 
Thy type untampered with, the naked star ! " x 

He alone then saw that the kingdom of God was a moral and 
spiritual fabric, and that moral and spiritual, not political, re- 
construction was its necessary presupposition. He alone left 
theories and formulas and stepped forward into action. And he, 
in the teeth of current opinion, directed the sword of Jehovah, not 
against the Gentiles, but " towards Israel itself." 2 He began 
the transformation which Christ completed. He was His intel- 
lectual as well as spiritual forerunner. 

All sorts and conditions of men, high and low, from city and 
country, came down to the Jordan. The movement spread from 
Judaea to Galilee. A national regeneration seemed at hand ; a 
religious reform to have taken root. A stream of inquirers came 
down to the river, like Hindus to the sacred Ganges, to wash 
and be clean, but with moral rather than ceremonial intention. 
The religious revival of the second Elias was repeating that of 
the first. 3 

As the kingdom the Baptist proclaimed was a new and yet old 
kingdom, so the typical initiatory rite he required was new and 
yet old. Old for "proselytes of righteousness" {Gerey hatst- 
sedeq) submitted to baptism (Tebhilah) in order to be " born 
anew," in Rabbinical language, as children of the covenant ; 
old because water was familiar as an instrument of outward and 
a symbol of spiritual cleansing, both in Scripture and earlier or 
later tradition. 4 Rabbi Akiva says, " Blessed are ye, O Israel ! 
Before whom are ye cleansed ? and who is he that cleanseth you? 

1 R. Browning, "Francis Furini." 2 Hausrath, p. 103. 

3 Cf. Milligan, " Elijah," in Men of the Bible Series. 

4 Hershon, " Treasures of the Talmud," pp. 99, 112, 140. 



62 JESUS CHRIST. 

even your Father which is in heaven ;" for it is said (Ezek. 
xxxvi. 25), " I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be 
clean." And again it is said (Jer. xvii. 13), " The ablutionary 
bath of Israel is the Lord. As the ablutionary bath cleanses 
the unclean, so does the Holy One — blessed be He ! — cleanse 
Israel." To this day a Jew bathes on the eve of the day of 
atonement, to wash away his sins. But it was also new. 

By submitting to this washing in Jordan the penitents ex- 
pressed their personal sense of sin, and need of reconciliation to 
God, disclaimed the imputation of the "merits of the Fathers" 
to Abraham's children, and entered into a new covenant relation 
with God. Such a baptism, like the Law itself, of which St. 
John was, so to speak, the personal embodiment, and last repre- 
sentative, could only create, or deepen, without satisfying 
the consciousness of sin. The Baptism of Christ was as much 
above the Baptism of John as the Gospel was above the Law, 
the master the servant. The Baptism of John led to that remis- 
sion of sins which the Lamb of God brought into the world. 
The penitential element remains in Christian Baptism. The 
simple wooden cross often set up by the banks of flowing rivers 
in heathen lands, signifies to the converts who partake of 
the bath of regeneration a baptism of repentance whereby they 
forsake sin, and a remission upon entrance into a new covenant 
of life. 

How exactly the kingdom of God was coming, what shape it 
would take, lay outside the prophet's immediate perception. As 
his life was as eminently practical as his teaching, his penitents 
appear to have been organized into the germ of a Messianic 
community. It was a kingdom as yet kingless. Its members 
were under training for a higher Presence and kingdom,were being 
led from a Baptism of hope to a Baptism of life and pardon. As 
John followed the winding course of the Jordan from Judaea to 
Decapolis, increasing multitudes, enjoying the holiday of a Sab- 
batic year, came from various motives to see him, and some to 
remain with him. 

The date of his appearance is carefully fixed in St. Luke's ac- 
count. The third Evangelist often shows that he has Gentile 
and cultivated readers in view, who looked for scientific method 
in history and chronological data. How long he had been 
preaching before Jesus came to him we are not told. 

What particular impulse drew Jesus to John's baptism is not 



THE DIVINE BAPTISM. 63 

revealed. Whether He was conscious that His pre-official life 
was at an end, whether He had inward Divine intimation, or 
whether He went as a son of Israel in response to the Divine 
appeal by the prophet, in unconsciousness of Messianic inaugura- 
tion, we cannot say. Certainly in the perfection of His human 
sympathy, in the desire of His soul "to devote Himself to the 
kingdom of God,'' x He went as a runner to the mark. And the 
Baptism itself was Godward, an expression of His self-consecra- 
tion to the service of the kingdom. And His prayer awakes the 
Divine assurance of His accepted surrender as well as manward 
laying " the foundation of all future baptisms." 2 

It may have been at 'Abarah, 3 the recently recovered probable 
site of Bethany, or Bethabara, that the great event in the 
Baptist's life took place. It was " in winter, according to the 
unanimous tradition of the early Church," 4 and possibly on 
January 6 or 10 (B.C. 4), according to the Basilidean tradition, 
that the Messiah stood unrecognized on the bank. He was last 
of a crowd. The prophet recognized Him. 

" Tantum egregio decus enitet ore." 5 

The moral majesty and unearthly grace of rapt unconscious 
beauty could not fail to impress the one man most sensitive to a 
breath from heaven. The power wielded by unfallen Innocence 
and transparent holiness was as that of an incarnate infallible 
Conscience. 6 The spiritual sympathy of St. John would have felt 
some of this even if he had never heard the name of Jesus men- 
tioned in his home life. He tried to escape his official duty, 
and become the penitent of Jesus. 

" How didst thou start, Thou Holy Baptist, bid 
To pour repentance on the Sinless Brow ! " "J 

St. Luke characteristically mentions that Jesus was praying 
when the sign was given of the rending heavens and the de- 

1 Dorner, "System," &c., iii. pp. 377, 378. 2 Ibid. 

"Twenty-one Years' Work in the Holy Land," p. 94 foil. 
4 Bp. Ellicott, p. 105. 5 Virg., "^n.," iv. 150. 

Dr. Wace, " Christianity and Morality,'' p. 247 f., in a different context 
" Conceive yourselves in the presence of a Conscience Incarnate, and then 
try to realize the awful homage which would be extorted from your souls." 
7 J. H. Newman. 



64 JESUS CHRIST. 

scending dove, and the confirming word of the Father uttered 
itself. 

Why the Christ sought to be baptized is a question which was 
first raised by His baptizer, and it has been variously answered. 

Some have seen in Jesus the Representative Penitent ; others 
view the Baptism as the inauguration of His ministerial life ; 
others as the last act of the private life of the Perfect Ideal 
Israelite, going to the Baptism of St. John, because it was from 
heaven, and of His Father, without ulterior motive. In the ful- 
ness of the words " fulfil all righteousness," in regard to the past, 
the present, and the future, every partial interpretation expresses 
but one aspect. It was the righteousness of the perfect Israelite 
acknowledging the obligation of obedience to the prophet of 
Israel imposing a rite from heaven, and attesting his Divine 
mission. It was the righteousness of the Son of Man, the Re- 
presentative of humanity, inaugurating a new relation with the 
Father of all. It was the righteousness of the Apostle of God 
devoting Himself to a life of perfect fulfilment of His will. 

Nor did the long-withheld Divine response delay. The 
sundering heavens, the descending dove, the articulate voice 
were the outward and visible signs of the descending Spirit. 
The Baptism of the Spirit completed the Baptism of the Divine 
Penitent. The reward of self humiliation was given in Divine 
exaltation. The Christ was anointed as Prophet, Priest, King, 
of the new Israel, the new Church, the new kingdom, conse- 
crated to His triple office and work by the washing of water and 
the unction of the Spirit, even as the high priests were conse- 
crated by the washing of water and the affusion of " the 
anointing oil" (Exod. xxix. 4, 7 ; Lev. viii. 6, 12). It was the 
anointing, too, which fulfilled Messianic prefigurements and 
types — the anointing of the promised sanctuary of the great 
Messianic eighth chapter of Isaiah (viii. 14 ; cf. Ezek. xi. 16) ; the 
anointing of the Most Holy after sixty weeks of Daniel's vision. 

As the Baptism of the Messiah fulfilled prophecy, so was it 
itself a prophecy of the "mystical washing away of sin," and 
all the other blessings connected with His own Baptism of the 
future. This prospective and retrospective character belongs 
essentially to all the work of the Divine Man. His life cannot 
be considered in a purely historical context ; nor could it, had 
He been only a human being of extraordinary power and beauty 
of nature. For " before '' and " after " belong to every human 



THE DIVINE BAPTISM. 65 

life which but faintly ripples over the ocean of time ; how much 
more to that which has relations to all time ? 

The Divine Messiah had waited for the Divine Investiture. 
And now His official life was to begin. It was as a second birth 
to a new life. In the language of the Church of old, " His 
second nativity." ■ The Voice from heaven spake in the 
Messianic language of the Second Psalm and the forty-second 
chapter of Isaiah, accrediting to the Baptist, who, as he saw the 
Spirit descending as a dove, in his own words, can hardly have 
failed to share alone with Christ the hearing of the Voice, the 
man Jesus, as the beloved Son of God. 

To Jesus it was the seal of Divine authentication. It was 
the Fatherly recognition. It was the first break in the silence 
and loneliness of thirty years. It was, so to speak, a breath 
from Home. If the occasion was marked by the first visible and 
audible Divine intervention, it must have been one which 
called for it. God's acts are not arbitrary, but according to 
law. It was the meeting-point of the private and public life 
Divine, of the unasserted and the asserted Messiahship, of the 
old and the new kingdom, of the old and the new covenant, and 
of the old and the new righteousness. 

As the Nazarene life of obscure devotion, so the public 
Baptism and the descent of the Dove, were contrary to all 
Rabbinical Messianic preconceptions. Jesus, as decidedly as 
John, broke with the current Messianic idea at once. This 
cannot have been done in ignorance. From a purely human 
point of view He could not have lived till thirty in populous 
Galilee without hearing the current versions of the Messianic 
hope. Alike the Baptist and the Baptized had waited for a 
sign, waited for God to declare Himself, prisoners of hope. 

1 Abp. Trench, " Studies," p. 3. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE DIVINE TEMPTATION. 

"Some bodily form of ill 
Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse 
Tainting the hallowed air, and laughs, and flaps 
Its hideous wings." 

J. H. Newman, "The Dream of Gerontius." 

Personal Tempter, external and real ; not an internal process — First offer — 
Supposed Buddhist resemblance — Second offer — Third offer— Tempta- 
tions recurrent — Temptation representative. 

With the rapture of His Father's greeting in His ears, and the 
exultation of the Spirit within, Jesus stepped out of the decisive 
baptismal waters like a young soldier into the gaud/a certaminis. 
He was strong in the Lord. The joy of the Lord was His 
strength. Even His bodily energy was at full tide. So 
strengthened, " He found and felt no need" 1 of food for all the 
forty days of strife. 

There is a Divine fitness in the Temptation. The second 
Adam suffered this humiliation that all Adam's sons might 
share in the victory. The tempter came. An external 2 coming 
alone satisfies the conditions of the narrative. The history must 
be accepted as authentic, or relegated to the region of myth. 
To regard the Temptation as an inner process in the mind of 
Jesus is to destroy the historical value of the sacred records not 
in this place only, but in all. The presence of Satan may, or 
may not, have been visible. The supreme master of the science 
of evil knew the outward life of Jesus, and all that had been 

1 Abp. Trench, "Studies," p. 13. 

2 Against Weiss's, &c, &c, " inner process. " 



THE DIVINE TEMPTATION. 67 

said of Him. He knew His claim to be the Messiah. How 
far a hostile spirit, without the internal conditions of faith and 
spiritual sympathy, could penetrate, ab extra, into His Being 
and Nature, can only be known to purely spiritual beings. It 
is a remarkable fact that the demonized recognized Christ, 
though with horror and fear. 

Christ was led, driven. An unseen Personal Force bore Him 
— a certain violence is implied in the words. Necessity was 
laid upon Him. The Temptation was not self-sought. It was 
an act of obedience. The constraining power of duty, even in 
the Christian, may be at times consciously felt like the pressure 
of an Invisible Hand. 

How the impeccable Son of God could suffer temptation is a 
mystery. That the Temptation was real is expressly asserted in 
Scripture. The reality of it stands or falls with the reality of 
the Human Nature assumed by the Divine Word. The point 
of attack throughout is the Man Jesus' sense of duty to God. 
God or self were the alternatives, stripped from disguise, set 
before His human spirit. A moment's consent to the mental 
picture would have been a declaration of victory to the world 
and its prince. 

If the demoniacal hierarchy knew Him, who He was, it is 
difficult to suppose their Head and Prince was not a partner in 
their belief and in their trembling, perhaps as the result of his 
discomfiture. The first Temptation was directed not only to the 
outward senses, but to the inner spirit. Its attractiveness, "its 
subtlety, lay in its very simplicity." x The arguments in its favour 
sounded irresistible. To make the stones bread would preserve 
a life in danger, and that life the most precious of all, and would 
preserve it without injury to any one or anything. The end was 
good, but the means bad. The method was not the one ap- 
pointed by God. By making stones bread Christ would have 
violated the conditions of His submission to human limitations. 
He would have broken the laws of Nature, which are the laws 
of God. He would have fallen into independence of God and 
distrust in His earthly providence, would have wrought a 
work for His own individual glory and comfort. He would have 
ceased to be a true Son of Man, for His Humanity would have 
been unreal. With His real Humanity would have gone His 

1 Bishop John Wordsworth, " University Sermons," p. 87. 



68 JESUS CHRIST. 

Mediation. And whatever the result, the object was to be 
attained at the bidding of the adversary. 

By way of contrast the Buddhist legend of Gautama's tempta- 
tion may be compared. In the latter case the austerities during 
which Mara, the destroyer, stood behind him, watching his op- 
portunity, remonstrating with him for his self-destruction, 
were the instrument of self-mortification ; they began and 
ended in self, and had no external relation to God and man. In 
Christ's case the asceticism was incidental to the Temptation, 
not an end in itself. There are other decisive points of contrast. 
Gautama's first temptation was to attavad, the first of the 
Buddhists' Ten Sins, i.e., the assertion of a self or individuality; 
in fact, to believe that he had a soul. Gautama was also tempted 
to arufiaragd, the seventh of the Ten Sins, or "desire to live in 
some one of the formless heavens." J 

In the second Temptation, the scene is changed from the 
lonely wilderness to the crowded city. The particles, " then," and 
"again," present in St. Matthew's report only (vers. 5, 8), 
indicate the historical order. St. Luke prefers the psycho- 
logical classification, and presents the Temptations in order of 
their appeal to body, soul, and spirit. Foiled in awaking the 
lust of the flesh, the Tempter invokes the lust of the eye. The 
former temptation had been to hopelessness. The second 
temptation is to over hopefulness. " The Spirit of God had 
driven Jesus into the wilderness ; the spirit of the devil now 
carried Him into Jerusalem. Jesus stands on the lofty pinnacle 
of the tower, or of the Temple porch, presumably that on which 
every day a priest was stationed to watch, as the pale morning 
light passed over the hills of Judea far off to Hebron, to 
announce it as the signal for offering the morning sacrifice." 2 
Shall not the Messiah cast Himself down, borne angel-like and 
by angels, into His Father's house below, where priest and 
people thronged the courts for worship, ready to receive the 
Divinely-attested sign from Heaven ? Would not a Father's 
love, and a Son's trust, be proved and certified ? But Christ's 
answer unmasked the lie. He would use, not abuse, His filial 
relation. He would not vindicate His own Divinity at the 
expense of His own Humanity. He would not please Himself. 

1 Professor Kellogg, " The Light of Asia and the Light of the World," 
] . ij.1 foil., ti.v. on Mr. Edwin Arnold's perverse misinterpretations in 
"Tne Light of Asia." 2 Edersheim, i. 303. 



THE DIVINE TEMPTATION. 69 

He would not become Supreme Head of the Church by the 
assertion of mere power. " Never might the hour of 
Christ the King be anticipated in order to accomplish more 
speedily or more easily the work of Christ the Priest and of 
Christ the Prophet." * The victory of grace, the Headship of 
the Church, was to be won by suffering. Christianity minus 
the Cross was a forbidden fruit. This Temptation was 
essentially religious. 

The scene changes from the Temple height to a very high 
mountain. Ecclesiastical supremacy has been offered, imperial 
earthly dominion is now held out, a Messianic empire and 
dominion of which Caesar's would be an item. All the king- 
doms of the world could be seen, not arithmetically but 
representatively, from one of the heights, where the second 
Moses, as from a Pisgah, could behold a land of promise — 
eastward and westward, stretching to the blue distances of the 
Euphrates, and the sheen of the Mediterranean flecked with 
cloudlike sails. The character of the Temptation suggests one 
of the heights of Abarim ; Nebo itself, commanding a view of 
the whole of Western Palestine, might have been the very place. 
Certainly the sharp hill of Quarantania, of Crusading tradition, 
could not be the mountain emphasized in the first Gospel as 
exceeding high. But the spot must be left, like the burial 
place of Moses, in its sublime secresy. 

As the first assault had been delivered upon the body, the 
second upon the human spirit, the third tries the human soul 
of Christ. It was the largest bid the Prince of this world 
could offer. The second place in the kingdom was offered 
Him. " What Satan sought was, ' My kingdom come,' a 
Satanic Messianic time, a Satanic Messiah ; the final realiza- 
tion of an empire of which his present possession was only 
temporary, caused by the alienation of man from God." 2 The 
height and depth of Satanic usurpation was here nakedly dis- 
closed. The arch rebel shows his colours. His despair of 
success breathes in the unspeakable audacity of the offer. It 
is the gambler's last stake, all that he has. 

The first Temptation had been personal, the second 
ecclesiastical, the third specially Messianic. The first attacked 
His Manhood, the second His Priesthood and His Prophetic 
office, the third His Royalty. All three involved a denial of 

1 Bp. Magee. s Edersheim, i. 305. 



70 JESUS CHRIST. 

His Messiahship, of His character and office as the Servant as 
well as the Son of God, of His true Manhood. In the last 
analysis, the essential principle in each case amounted to, Deny 
God, 

" Evil, be thou my good." x 

The last Temptation closes with the address of Satan by 
name. The issue had never been in doubt. The defeated 
assailant flies from the field. The Second Adam, and in Him 
humanity, have more than retrieved the Fall. The place left 
vacant by the fallen angel is filled by those who had been 
watching, it may be, hard by, spectators of the lists (cf. I Cor. 
iv. 9). Man did eat angels' food in angels' society. It is a 
foretaste of the triumphal march through Paradise, of the 
Royal Coronation at the Victor's return home. 

The Tempter left for a season only. The Temptations 
recur under various forms and forces. One of the titles to 
office and work in His Name was based upon the fact of 
having been with Him therein (Luke xxii. 28, 29). The Tempta- 
tion was not, then, an isolated incident ; it was intermittent, if 
not chronic. It was an haunting pain, a dogging mystery, a 
dark presence, 

" Teucris addita Juno." 

" His last word, ' I have overcome the world,' tells how sharp 
the strife had been, which is remembered even in heaven, as 
He speaks to His militant Church, and tells them that they 
shall overcome, even as I also overcame." 2 

The Temptation in the wilderness stands out above the 
others in its solitariness as the Temptation of temptations. The 
edge of the Tempter's sword was broken. The end was as the 
beginning, the victory of suffering and faith. The Temptation 
was not the victory of one man, but of the race of the Second 
Adam. The Temptation was typical. The Temptation was 
sacrificial. The Temptation was mediatorial. The Tempta- 
tion was redemptive. 

1 Milton. 

3 W. Robertson Nicoll, " The Incarnate Saviour," p. 88. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE LAMB OF GOD. THE DIVINE SON OF MAN AT THE 
SOCIAL FEAST. THE DIVINE REFORMER IN THE HOUSE 
OF GOD. THE DIVINE AND THE HUMAN RABBI. 

" Who for His immense love's sake was made that which we are, in orde 
that He might perfect us to be what He is " (Iren^eus v., preface, trans- 
lated by Keble). 

The first disciples — Sense of sin supreme factor — The Lamb of God — The 
Son of Man — The Cana wedding ; its promise — First Messianic 
passover — The Reformer — The Casuist. 

While Jesus was in the wilderness His servant John was ripen- 
ing to spiritual maturity. He had reached the full height of 
Messianic faith ; and now crowned his self-devotion by the free 
surrender of the flower of His disciples. Jesus was returning, 
and passing Bethany, or Bethabara. The morning before the 
Baptist declared he himself was neither the Messiah nor 
Elijah, nor the prophet of Moses' promise ; nothing but an 
impersonal voice. The next day (John i. 29) — could the writer 
fail to remember the minute incidents of his spiritual birthday ? 
— John stood with the Baptist John and Andrew, and saw their 
master's look upon Jesus, and heard his confession of the Lamb 
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. As St. 
Augustine eloqently paraphrases it, " digito demonstrans ait, 
' Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccatum mundi : tanquam 
dicens, Quern multi justi videre concupierunt, in quern venturum 
ab ipsius humani generis initio crediderunt, de quo Abraham 
dictae sunt promissiones, de quo scripsit Moyses, de quo Lex et 
prophetae sunt testes." M 

1 Con. duas Ep. Pel. iii. iv. n. 



72 JESUS CHRIST. 

The words show how the strongest force which impelled the 
Johannine disciples to Christ was a personal sense of sin. They 
were such as could use the beautiful confession of Augustine, 
" I perceived myself to be far off from Thee, in the region of 
unlikeness." I It was the sense of sin which the Law had 
fostered but not been able to remove. It was the glory of the 
Law that it could reach so far. Non-Christian religions lack 
this largely, or altogether ; even when equivalent terms are 
used the meaning is wholly different. A Chinese Buddhist, for 
instance, would consider it tsiu, or sin, for which he suffered, if 
he had done " some improper act unconsciously, or in childhood, 
as treading on an insect, wasting rice-crumbs, &c." 2 So again in 
Confucianism, the restriction of the worship of God to the 
sovereign " has prevented the growth and wide development 
among the Chinese of a sense of sin. Their moral short- 
comings, when brought home to them, may produce a feeling of 
shame, but hardly a conviction of guilt." 3 "So Hinduism does 
not ignore man's sinfulness altogether, but it explains it away 
or palliates it." The populace make God the author of sin ; 
others, a man's misfortune rather than his fault as the result of 
former births ; others, that sin, like the world, is " a mere 
illusion." " In Hinduism, considered as a religion, moral 
teaching finds no place." 4 Where there is no sense of moral 
evil in religion, the sense of sin has no religious existence, and 
tends to depart from any moral connection into a ceremonial 
one, or to disappear altogether. In Mohammedanism again 
orthodoxy covers a multitude of sins. Sin and wrong seem to 
the Mohammedans, says one who speaks from long practical as 
well as literary experience, " things that can be wiped out by a 
word, and they must be very grievous indeed if an orthodox 
profession does not win them forgiveness. They have never 
learnt that all forgiveness implies sacrifice." 5 

The modern eclectic Theists of the Brahmo Samaj similarly 
regard " sin as only a natural evil requiring remedial treatment, 

1 Conf. vii 10. 

2 Dr. Edkins, "Chinese Buddhism," p. 193, in Dr. Kellogg; and cf. 
Hardwick, " Christ and other Masters," p. 160. 

3 Prof. Legge, p. 296. 

4 Bp. Caldwell, " Christianity and Hinduism," pp, 29-50. 

5 Bp. Steore, Croydon Church Congress Report, in The Guardian 
1877, p. 1336. 



THE LAMB OF GOD. 73 

and not as a moral evil deserving punishment." ■ The 
presence of Christ always and everywhere, acted as a con- 
suming fire. The sense of sin would be increased, or created, 
when a seed-word or look dropped upon unhardened soil. 
Contrition would sometimes have brought the weary and 
heavy-laden to Him, and sometimes followed upon discipleship. 
It is so still. " I read them," said a Taoist dignitary who had 
for fifty years studied and tried to reach the ideal of Lao-tsze ; 
" I read them," said this Chinese Simeon, referring to some 
Christian tracts, "and it was as if scales fell from my eyes." 2 
John himself could instil contrition, but he pointed to the 
Lamb of God to supply its satisfaction. 

The words show, too, the greatness of the Baptist's faith. No 
other man could have made that confession, and condensed into 
an epigram of the soul the whole prospective teaching of the 
Law, the Prophets, and the worship. " Behold the Lamb of 
God which taketh away the sins of the world ! " It was more 
than a stroke of spiritual genius, it was a coruscation of the 
Spirit of God who spake to and by the prophets, breaking in 
light upon the Paschal Lamb, the daily offering, the figure of 
the Atoning Sufferer, in Isaiah liii., and the " still sad music " 
of sin and salvation which underlay the chants of psalmists, 
the burdens of prophets, the sacrifices of priests, the prayers 
of the God-fearing. It was a decisive speech for Christendom, 
a birth moment. 

Such a venture of faith was the consummate result of ages of 
spiritual development, refined and specialized in the disciplined 
patience and heart-whole devotion of the chosen prophet-priest. 
The Messianic confession takes immediate effect upon the not 
unprepared Andrew and John. 

"'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching." 3 

The Rabbinic answer of Jesus, " Come, and ye shall see," to 
the question (John i. 39), " Rabbi, where abidest Thou ? " is a 
formal invitation to discipleship. He appeals to personal 
experience. Experience is a test as valid in things spiritual as 
physical. 

1 Canon Churton, from Rev. N. Goreh, " The Brahmos ; their Idea of 
Sin and its Punishment," Mission Life, October, 1883. 

2 Legge, p. 297 3 R. Browning. 



74 JESUS CHRIST. 

Andrew, the first Christian, findeth his brother Simon, and 
with the most momentous words a son of Israel could hear, 
" we have found the Messiah," leadeth the son of John to 
Jesus. This family forms the germ of the Church. The 
Church develops by families. The family is the primitive unit 
of Church life and propagation. The house of Andrew foreruns 
the house of Zebedee, the house of Zebedee the churches in the 
house of Prisca and Aquila, of Philemon, of Nymphas and his 
friends, of the " collegium quod est indomo Sergiae Paulinas." l 

On the morrow, minutely remembered, Philip of Bethsaida, 
a fellow townsman, and doubtless friend of Andrew and Simon, 
is found of Christ, and himself finds Nathanael. By a Divine 
thought-reading Jesus works instantaneous conviction in the 
heart of the guileless Israelite. Spiritual affinities flash into 
contact. Nathanael saw in Jesus the Son of God and the King 
of Israel ; the very thought of his thoughts as he mused under 
the shadow of his fig-tree. 2 Jesus revealed Himself to him as 
the Son of Man. 

The Cana miracle explains the title in action. How far the 
title was new to Jewish experience is a critical question. 
Daniel's vision of a Son of Man seems far too distinctly per- 
sonal to be dreamed into an idealized nation. Enoch, in the 
Book of the Three Parables, frequently uses the title, but this 
portion of his Apocalypse is probably of Christian origin. In 
Rabbinic literature the name, Son of Man, is not used of the 
Messiah. 3 The name, then, seems to have been unknown as a 
Messianic title to the Jews of our Lord's time. Here we have, 
then, a title due to the creative mind of Jesus Himself, or 
drawn out from unsuspected germs. The fulness of meaning 
germinant in the term remains for all the centuries of Christian 
life to develop. 

If Conder's identification of Bethabara, or Bethany, with 
the ford of 'Abarah, near Beisan, as the place of Christ's 
Baptism be accepted, it was but a day's journey distant from 

1 Col. iv. 15, and Bp. Lightfoot, s. I. 

2 Asa sacred fig-tree is mentioned in the case of the Buddha, as the 
place of the first conversions to his religion, and of his entrance on his 
ministry, Professor Seydel grounds upon this, in conneclion with four other 
alleged but illusive coincidences, the inference that the gospel is more or 
less dependent upon and derivable from the Buddhist legend. Vide Kel- 
logg, p. 85 foil. ; Kuenen, lecture v. and note xiii. for a complete refutation. 

3 Stanton, confirmed by Dr. Schiller Szinessv. 



THE DIVINE SON OF MAN AT THE SOCIAL FEAST. 75 

Cana or Nazareth. 'Abarah is the principal ford of the Jordan, 1 
north of Beisan, 2 and is " about twenty-two miles in a line from 
Kefr Kenna." The variant and preferable reading, Bethania. 
is probably only Beth-Oniyah, 3 the house of shipping, and 
another appellation for Beth-Abara, the " house of passage," or 
" of shipping." This identification invalidates the objections 
of Schenkel, and the author of " Supernatural Religion," to the 
geographical accuracy of the fourth Evangelist, and the as- 
sumptions built thereupon. 

Kefr Kenna, the traditional Cana, is now a large village, 
lying on the southern slope of the plain of the fertile " Golden 
Plain," or plain of Toran. The balance of authority strongly 
supports it in preference to Khurbet Kana. 

The distance from Nazareth is but five miles. The proximity 
suggests that the bridegroom or bride of the marriage feast 
were friends of the family of Mary or Joseph. At the south 
of the village is still found " a copious fountain of excellent 
water," which may have supplied the waterpots. The village 
of Christ's day appears to have been "at least thrice as large 
as now." Cana is still the " reedy," as its name suggests. 

Here, probably Wednesday, Jesus and His mother and His 
disciples came as guests to a wedding feast. Jesus had con- 
secrated home life at Nazareth. The highest and holiest point 
of home life He consecrates at Cana. The Divine origin and 
character and meaning of marriage He reaffirms most fitly 
where Scripture and Rabbinical tradition alike would hallow 
the mystery. The presence of His mother appears to have 
occasioned the invitation to Jesus and His disciples. The 
unlooked-for addition possibly caused the insufficiency of wine. 
Galilean simplicity and kindness ruled the day. 

When the wine fails the mother turns naturally to Jesus, as 
in any need of the Nazarene household. But " the hour", the 
time for Messianic revelation— and Mary could not have been 
a stranger to all that had happened in the last forty and more 
days, and the confessions of faith — lay not with her, but with 
God. Having vindicated His Messianic independence, the 



1 For a picture of a Jordan ford see Warren, " Recovery of Jerusalem/' 

P- 335- 

2 "Survey," p. 131 f. ; "Twenty-One Years,'" p. 96 ; Conder, "Tent 
Life," ii. 65 f. 3 Edersheim, i. 278. 



76 JESUS CHRIST. 

Son of Mary grants her indirect prayer. The water which 
filled the six waterpots, perhaps drawn from the existing 
fountain, variously estimated at from 63 to 153 gallons ac- 
cording to the measure of the metretes (Hebrew bath), became 
wine. 

The Messianic effect of the first miracle is specially noted by 
St. John. His and his fellow-disciples' faith was confirmed. 

Christian thought has seen much more than a wedding gift 
in the boon of Jesus. The first supper points on to the last, 
and both to the marriage-supper of the Lamb. The Cana 
wedding looks back to the marriage between Jehovah and His 
people, ratified and renewed betwixt Christ and His Church. 
The transmutation of water into wine suggests the final trans- 
formation and glorification of Nature, the consecration of 
matter under ennobled forms. The Christ blessing of the 
wedding party shows that " all life is potentially divine," x and 
that all social relations are transformable into a communion of 
saints. 

Again, the miracle deserves all the emphasis of its first place. 
For it is typical. "As the first act of the new creation, it shows 
what the nature of that creation is to be." 2 " As the first leaf 
which the plant produces is the type upon which the whole 
plant is constructed ; and foliage, flower, and fruit are but 
modifications of the primordial leaf;" so the first Divine work 
is "a key to the character of the whole series." It is Eucharistic. 
The gospel is joy. The Christ came from joy to bring to joy, 
from glory to glorify. 

Family ties were breaking, but not yet sundered. The Holy 
Family and the disciples went down to Capernaum, thence- 
forward the head quarters of Messianic work. 

As the Cana sign was typical of the Divine power of bene- 
dictory joy entering into a joyless world ; so the Temple- 
cleansing which soon followed was typical of Divine wrath. 
It was the same character under opposite conditions. As a 
Messianic sign the former was to bless, the latter to ban. 
The one as much as the other was an assertion of the Messianic 
claim. The Divine Man to nature, to society, to religion, was 
uttering Himself. On either occasion, time and place are fit- 

1 H. Macmillan, "The Marriage in Cana," p. 16. 

2 Ibid., p. 224. 



THE DIVINE REFORMER IN THE HOUSE OF GOD. JJ 

test scenes for Divine drama, the wedding feast, the national 
Temple, the home of man, the house of God. 

The first Messianic passover was now nigh at hand. All 
over the country preparations were going on. Over flower-lit 
plains and hills, along repaired roads, by cleansed streams, 
by tOmbs freshly whitened, pilgrims poured from all parts of 
Jewry. The far-shining marble walls and golden roof of the 
Temple was their goal. All this preparatory purification was 
an unconscious prophecy of the Messianic work of purifying 
which would begin with the House of God. From the 15th 
Adar the money changers' stalls rang in every town. The 
statutable Temple tribute must be paid in the half-shekel, and 
the charge of qolbon * must be met for the change. 

What a scene of noise and confusion opened upon the eyes 
of the Messiah as He made His first entrance as the Son of 
Man into His Father's house. What disappointment to a 
mind filled with preparatory awe in approaching the greatest 
feast of the Church ! The lowing of the sacrificial oxen, the 
bleating of the sacrificial sheep, the moan of the sacrificial 
doves, the jingling of coins, the hubbub of barter, had turned 
the court where Gentiles worshipped the Father of all into a 
Babel market. The shock was too great to be borne. The 
evil must be met full face at once. If any ordinary Jew, 
Phinehas-like, might champion God's honour against illegal 
authorized desecration, much more should the Messiah vindi- 
cate God's exclusive claim to the place where He had put His 
Name. Casting out all the lawbreakers, Jesus in one judicial 
moment stood upon the platform of the prophet and the re- 
former. The boldness and success of the stroke was a miracle 
of moral force. It was a direct challenge to the priestly 
faction, who were the chief shareholders in this Vanity Fair. 
The Temple market was probably the " Bazaars of the sons of 
•Annas," the covetous oppressor (Chanuyoth beney Chanan). 
The Temple was profaned by its own highest officers. The 
unpopularity of the traffic may have given negative support 
to Christ's action. The effect upon the priest party was to 
awake a rancour which never forgot. The effect upon the 
disciples was naturally to deepen their convictions, and likewise 
to increase their number. Such a temper was pre-eminently 

1 i^d to 2d., hence KoWvQog, KoWv^icrrric. 



78 JESUS CHRIST. 

Messianic. A Messianic Psalm had foreshadowed the devour- 
ing zeal shown by the Lord. And other signs followed. 

This act was critical and formed two parties. The " sign " 
was spoken for and against. The disciples formed the nucleus 
of the Messianic party, the Jews, as St. John terms the hostile 
faction, the anti-Christian. The latter demand a sign, the in- 
variable reply to any Messianic assertion. The answer was 
mystical. The Temple of His Body, which was now the true 
Temple into which all the meaning and worship of the latter was 
passing, let them destroy it, He would raise it again in 
three days. This intimation in His first official Messianic work 
shows that the end was full in view. Sacrifice, Death, Resurrec- 
tion — the end was before the beginning. Nor were the words 
forgotten by His enemies. 

The sharp turns in the Johannine narrative may be of set 
purpose. Scene in the life contrasts with scene ; and cross 
lights converge upon the one character. From the crowded 
Temple the disciple carries us to the silent room (John iii.). 
From the public clamour to the darkness and the solitary 
thinker. From a descriptive picture to a character sketch. 
The writer's object is not to give an encyclopaedic history, but 
a vivid personal memorial. He selects typical scenes. The » 
fourth Gospel is the most individual and the most universal. 
The light, the truth, the Word, absolute, very God. The light, 
the truth, the Word in contact with individuals ; faith or un- 
belief the necessary answer. Nicodemus (Naqdimon) was a 
representative man. A Sanhedrist, a cultivated gentleman, an 
intellectual inquirer, a seeker after truth. Like many of the 
nation he was spiritually awake. The miracles of the Passover 
week had arrested his attention. Miracles had done for him 
all they can do, they had brought him questioning, seeking, to 
the Royal Presence. The obstinate questions which importuned 
an answer must be brought to Him who raised them. The 
"how "of Nicodemus exactly reflects his character and point 
of view. Christ throughout replies to his latent as well as 
expressed thought. There is no concession to the social 
position, educational prejudices, or intellectual prepossessions 
of the master in Israel. The master must learn to be a disciple, 
the teacher to be taught of God. The kingdom of God, the 
substance and desire of all Jewish thought, was come and in 
His own Person. The laws of that kingdom were after a 



THE DIVINE AND THE HUMAN RABBI. 79 

heavenly and spiritual order. A second birth and spiritual 
childhood were required to enter into it. The night wind that 
swept past the aliyah along the dark and narrow street was an 
u apt figure of a self-determining invisible force " T — that force 
the action of the Divine Spirit. Jesus not only lays down the 
law of Christian Baptism as the initial Sacrament of the 
Kingdom, but also determines the rightful temper of the 
mind towards the mysteries of the Kingdom. The " how " 
is knowable to faith alone. The child years, or the child heart, 
accept the personal word of Christ as credible upon its own 
merits. 

The conversation moves on from mystery to mystery. To a 
mind so thorough and so well furnished as Nicodemus', at all 
events in the Law, the only culture of the Palestinian Jew, one 
question suggests another. St. John has doubtless given but a 
fragmentary outline. The new teaching and the demand it 
made raised the question of its authorization. Christ speaks 
openly of His pre-existence, and of the coming shadow of His 
death, in fulfilment of the type of the brazen serpent. 

The death to which He had obscurely alluded in the Temple 
is still in His mind. This truth sunk deep into Nicodemus' 
mind. It bore fruit. The Cross is always the turning point. 
Under the Cross the victory of conviction was complete, and 
he stepped forward to honour the forsaken Body. 

Nicodemus, the Jewish savant, honestly yielding to the pres- 
sure of evidence, as to an imperious spiritual and intellectual 
necessity, is a speaking likeness of many moderns. Among 
the higher class of cultivated heathen there are not a few in whom 
the prejudice of society and the pride of secular culture are 
breaking up. But with them conviction maybe slowly wrought. 
And the distance between conviction and action — e.g., in the 
case of the native Indian half-Christian — is as great as Oriental 
irresolution can make it. And within the Christian circle, too, 
there are many who are asking the inexorable how, in every 
tense of the interrogative mood ; and many too impatient to 
wait for an answer " a little while." 

* H. P. Liddon, " University Sermons," ii. 80. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE BAPTIST'S FAREWELL TESTIMONY. THE SAVIOUR AND 
THE SAMARITANESS. THE NAZARENE. 

" Life ; I repeat, is energy of love 
Divine or human ; exercised in pain, 
In strife, in tribulation ; and ordained, 
If so approved and sanctified, to pass, 
Through shades and silent rest to endless joy." 

Wordsworth, " Excursion," Book V. 

Jesus on the Baptist's ground — The Prophet's last testimony — Jesus in 
Samaria — The Well of Jacob — In Galilee again — In Nazareth again. 

Jesus now left the City for Judaea. His disciples administered 
a symbolical preparatory baptism, empty as yet of the Spirit. 
The work of the Baptist was carried on. But it is possible that 
he had never been as far south. The traditional site of his 
baptizing in Judaea would then have to be given up. 
The Gospels only mention Bethabara and ^Enon, both north of 
Judaea. But as the people of Jerusalem and all Judaea are 
specially mentioned as coming to his baptism, and as he would 
be more likely to begin in the south and move northward, it is 
more likely that he had been in the very places, and left among 
those who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Jordan souls maturing 
lor the advent of the King (Matt. iii. 5). " At this point, then, 
the work of Christ and of His Forerunner met. Christ had 
not been acknowledged as King in the chief seat of the theocracy, 
therefore He began His work afresh in a new field and in a new 
character." * 

1 Dr. Westcott. 



THE BAPTISTS FAREWELL TESTIMONY. 8 1 

As Jesus passed northward His disciples and John's would 
meet and intermingle. The stronger force overbore the weaker. 
Perhaps in jealousy the disciples of the Baptist upon the occasion 
of a controversy with a Jew upon one of the numerous current 
questions connected with purification bring him the tidings of 
Jesus' greater success, and of what might appear to them as 
the defection of his own partisans to another. The answer of 
the forerunner was as noble as characteristic, " He must increase, 
but I must decrease." Nothing equal to it had been said before 
him, except Moses' " Enviest thou for n v sake ? " 

It was a fitting peroration to his life's testimony. He had 
borne the prophet's cross without of malice, and calumny, mis- 
representation—of fighting as God's standard-bearer against a 
rebellious house. He had borne the prophet's cross within of 
failure, self- distrust, and the coming short of high ideals. He 
now bore the rising tide of loss in personal disciples and per- 
sonal influence, the diminution of the faithful remnant, not 
with equanimity, but with joyous joy. 1 

Whilst Jesus' disciples were baptizing in Judaea, John seems 
to have followed the course of the Jordan southward from 
Bethabara. This may have been partly to avoid the growing 
ferocity of Pharisaic antagonism, partly to prepare the way of 
Christ at a central situation, convenient both for the north, for 
Samaria, and for the main road from the south. For ^Enon 
near to Salim is by Conder and others identified with 'Ainun, 
at the head of the Wady Far-ah, " which is the great highway 
up from the Damieh ford for those coming from the east by 
way of Peniel and Succoth ; " Salim being seven miles north- 
ward, perhaps the Shalem of Gen. xxxiii. 18. The Wady 
Far-ah, starting at Shechem, formed the north boundary of 
Judaea ; and the open ground there is just the place for crowds 
to assemble. Here, too, is the "much water," or many springs, 
indicated by the name. 

The objection, however, that ^Enon and Salim would both 
then be in Samaria has great force. And the old tradition, 
mentioned by Jerome, placing it eight miles south of Beisan 
(Scythopolis), apparently " at the opening of the Wady 
Khusneh into the Ghor," 2 on the border of Samaria and 
Galilee, "has this in its favour— that it locates the scene of 
John's last public work close to the seat of Herod Antipas, 
1 X a P<*X ai P H (fohniii. 29). 2 Caspari. 



82 JESUS CHRIST. 

into whose power the Baptist was so soon to be delivered." x It 
is also nearer 'Abarah where John was last heard of. In any 
case there is not the slightest indication, but every probability 
to the contrary, that Jesus and John met again after the 
Baptism. 

The Baptist's martyrdom of life was now drawing to an end. 
Herod was a suspicious coward like Tiberius himself, and 
according to Josephus, " fearing lest such influence of his over 
the people might lead to some rebellion, for they seemed ready 
to do anything by his counsel," 2 resolved upon his arrest and 
death. 

" Calm 's not life's crown ; " 3 

this life's crown was very storm. His capture, of which we 
should have been glad of particulars, for we might have found 
some of the indignities of Herod's soldiers to the Master 
anticipated upon the servant, took place about this time. The 
Synoptists ignore the ostensible, and disclose another and 
weightier, reason which actuated Herod ; for personal offence 
is a deeper spring of hatred than political antipathy, and would 
be keenest of edge in such a mean, sensual, nature as Herod's. 
His outspoken rebuke of his incestuous connection with 
Herodias stung him too sharply for pardon. When he was in 
his power the king paid him the tribute of attentive listening. 
He was interested. He had, if no religious scruples, religious 
curiosity and sensibility. He could be moved in his feelings 
to anything but repentance and heart change. Like the guilty, 
conscience-stricken king in Hamlet, he would like to 

" Be pardon'd, and retain the offence." 

The capture of the Baptist endangered Christ. The Pharisaic 
party, with the sharpsightedness of hate, must have already 
seen that the cause of the two was identical. They would take 
the one life on their way to the other. Had not the Lord kept 
out of danger He could easily have been arrested on such a 
false accusation as He afterwards was. He could have been 
imprisoned in Machaerus. The Forerunner and the Messiah 
would have been executed together, and the blood of the 
world's ransom been shed in a rocky cell. So would Scripture 

1 Edersheim, i. 393. • "Ant." xviii. 5. 2. ' M. Arnold. 



THE BAPTIST'S FAREWELL TESTIMONY. 83 

have been unfulfilled, and the agony and Cross spared to the 
Saviour, and lost to the children of His salvation. The life 
of the Son of Man was too precious to be thrown away. Our 
Lord was courage itself, but not presumption or rashness. 
Persecuted from one city, He would on occasion flee to another. 
Endangered in one place, He would seek safety of His life, and 
His kingdom, and His teaching, and all that depended upon 
them, without hurrying to fatal issues, or hastening by one 
moment the movement of Scriptural fulfilments, and the 
season of Divine appointment. 

To reach Galilee the natural road lay through Samaria. 
This was taken by the Lord. One Samaritan incident is 
graven in the memory of the fourth Evangelist. Perhaps for 
personal reasons. He may, as some think, have been the 
solitary witness ; and the account bears the marks of an eye- 
witness in such incidental pictorial details as " sat thus," and 
the woman " left her waterpot." And the Samaritan episode as 
a whole formed a most encouraging contrast to the Judasan 
experience. The Messiah was well received. The conversion 
of the unnamed woman was fruitful in a harvest of ingathering. 
Samaria was, too, the scene of St. John's own apostolic labours 
when he and St. Peter went down from Jerusalem to lay their 
hands upon those who had been taught and baptized by Philip 
the Evangelist. Personal associations are so impressing a 
factor in memories of time and place that some of the above- 
named reasons would account for the minuteness and freshness 
of personal portraiture and local colouring shown in the account. 

While Jesus sat in the weariness of a real humanity at the 
sixth, or evening, hour, 1 let us pause to reflect upon the associa- 
tions of the scene, and its present condition to-day. It was the 
Well of Jacob — the laborious work of "a stranger in the land" 
where surface springs were abundant, who was confident of its 
tenure by his prosperity, according to Divine promise. It was 
a monument to the industry and faith of Jacob, and bears his 
name, honoured by Jew, Samaritan, Moslem, and Christian to 
this day. Joseph, too, had his memorial hard by, less than 
half a miie, on the north. The Tomb of Joseph occupies the 
accepted authentic site, and is now a square, roofless, white- 
walled enclosure, resembling most of the Moslem cenotaphs. 

1 Westcott and Maclellan have settled the question of the Johannine 
reckoning of hours quite conclusively. 



84 JESUS CHRIST. 

On the south towered the rough, rocky slopes of Gerizim 
" about iooo feet above the valley east of Shechem, 2848 feet 
above the sea," the mountain of the Old Beatitudes, the " holy 
mountain " of Samaritan faith. On the west the olives, vine 
yards, and varied foliage of the many-watered Vale of Shechem, 
most fertile of valleys, Ebal rising behind, mountain of curses 
and Joshua's altar of unhewn stones. On Ebal's slope the 
town of Sychar, now the mud huts of 'Askar, about half a 
mile off; coming from which to the well the Samaritans wo:ild 
have been in the Lord's sight. The site, too, of the Tomb of 
the " Holy King Joshua," as the Samaritans call him, appears 
to be rightly identified as but nine miles south of the present 
Nablus. On the north-east the neighbourhood of Shalem, but 
two miles distant, with its memory of Jacob's tents, at Shechem, 
a mile and a half distant, Abraham had made his first encamp- 
ment, and built the altar on the ground which Jacob had after- 
wards purchased. Here, too, "by the oak of the pillar that 
was in Shechem" (Judg. ix. 6), Abimelech had been made the 
first king. Hither had come Rehoboam, " for all Israel were 
come to Shechem to make him king" (1 Kings xii. 1) ; and 
here Jeroboam set up his'rival kingdom. 

However weary the Lord was, such a speaking scene could 
not have been mute to the Son of Israel. The spot where He 
rested, being so certainly identified, is all but the most worship- 
ful in the Holy Land. The well is now covered with a ruined 
vault, which may " possibly be the crypt of the church built 
over the well about the fourth century." 1 The well is now 
generally dry. Originally it must have been of great depth, 
for in 1838 it was 105 feet deep, according to Robinson; in 
1866 the accumulation of debris had reduced it to 75 feet ; in 
1875 it remained the same. The groove in the stone made by 
the ropes which drew up the waterpot may still be felt. 2 

While Jesus rested the disciples went to buy food, allowably 
purchasable of the Samaritans then, but not later. If John 
did not stay with Him — as would be the most natural negative 
inference from the twenty-seventh verse, and the omission of 
any mention of another witness, the absence of a third person 
may have not been fortuitous in the Saviour's solemnity and 
delicacy of contact with the fallen daughter of Samaria. In 

1 " Survey,'' ii. p. 177 ; Barclay, 1881. 
2 "Twenty-On e Years," p. 194, and illustration. 



THE SAVIOUR AND THE SAMARITANESS. 85 

that case the narrative may well have come from the thankful 
lips of a convert, at the time, or at St. John's after-visit. 

It is another contrast which now fills the Johannine canvas, a 
contrast of scene, society, and character. The dialogue with the 
Samaritan woman follows close upon that with Nicodemus. 
The scene is very fully given. Doubtless St. John's apostolic 
visitation of Samaria was one of the later fruits of this Samari- 
tan episode. Christ's spiritual treatment of the doubly outcast 
Cuthite is the opposite of His treatment of the Jerusalem 
Sanhedrist. In the latter He repels ; in the former He attracts. 
In the latter He is sought ; in the former He seeks. In the latter 
His speech has the ring of authority ; in the former He stoops 
to conquer. The spiritual meeting-point between the Divine 
and the earthly Rabbi was found in the signs of Divine power. 
The spiritual touch between the Saviour and the sinner in her 
consciousness of sin. 

Nicodemus and the Samaritaness agreed in a Messianic hope 
of some sort. But the former started from the full Scripture 
canon and the post-canonical literature ; the latter from the 
Mosaic books only, in a tampered and falsified text. The former 
from the Law, of which he was a master ; the latter from the 
inferiority and ignorance of a degraded womanhood. The 
former from orthodoxy ; the latter from heresy and schism. 
The former from social honour ; the latter from shame. The 
venture of faith was as slow in the former as rapid in the other. 
The " personal equation " made the difference, and unknown 
developments of inward history. No one else in the world 
could have united in a common interest, preparatory to a 
common brotherhood, two such opposites as the proud Sanhe- 
drist, and the low Samaritaness. 

As the Lord sat by the well in restful silence, the woman of 
Sychar came there, as she may have come hundreds of times 
before. Evening is still called in that changeless East " the 
time that women go out to draw water." s She was indeed an un- 
conscious type and representative of the thousands upon thou- 
sands of the then and still degraded, downtrodden daughters of 
Eastern lands, whom nothing but the strong arm of Christian 
faith can raise, and the power of Christian civilization elevate to 
their true place and function in the kingdom of a world-winning 
Christ. It is not likely that the women of half-heathen Samaria 
1 Rev. J. Neil, "Palestine Explored," p. 19. 



86 JESUS CHRIST. 

occupied as honourable a position as those in Israel, and the 
higher -class women of Israel fell far below the standard of 
respect, of chivalry, of importance, of influence, of work 
accorded to them in Christian societies and civilizations. 

In defiance of conventional manners and proprieties the Lord 
spoke first. The dialogue is deeply instructive as showing more 
cleai\y than any other on record how the Lord dealt with those 
He sought to salvation. There is the quick play of conscience 
alarmed, but evasive ; the rapid thrust which wounds in order to 
heal ; the courtesy, the respect to a woman, a Samaritaness, and 
a bad character ; the change of front by wounded self-love to a 
controversial subject ; the wonderful and profound revelations 
of Christ, of His Father, and of the worship of His Father, 
undisclosed to Jewish ears. 

The earthly water our Lord graciously asked for suggested 
the spiritual. The local reference to Jacob on the woman's 
part, the well whereof he drank, his children, and his cattle, was 
as natural as that to this mountain — her religious world. This 
leads to further explanation of the water of eternal life. The Lord's 
manner was something no gospel, however faithful, could repro- 
duce ; we can only know that it must have added to His simplest 
words that impression of power, of love, of holiness, which He 
left whenever and wherever His fulness of grace and truth 
uttered itself. Manner and tone must be superadded to words 
in themselves such as never man spake, and the home thrust at 
the guilty life follows. It was a personal attack, and the woman 
would parry it by shifting her defence to the question of 
questions between Jew and Samaritan. The absence of false- 
hood, the implied confession, leave an opening for the Spirit of 
truth to enter. After the memorable words which have been 
a foundation-stone of the charter of the faith (John iv. 24), the 
controversial decision, the judicial affirmation, that salvation 
was not of the Samaritans, but of the Jews, suggested without 
mentioning the Messiah. The woman follows the lead ; and 
the first open declaration of Messiahship immediately follows : 
" I am, I that speak unto thee." 

The Samaritan conception of the Messiah was that of a pro- 
phet or teacher. When Messiah cometh, He will announce to 
us all things, the woman said. His teaching would be final and 
absolute. He was the Hashab, the Converter, and Hatkab, the 
Guide, now El Muhdy in the Samaritan vocabulary. As such 



THE SAVIOUR AND THE SAMARITANESS. 87 

the Cutbite accepted Him. Faith with the Samaritans was a 
plant of quick growth. Before the Lord had departed they not 
only believed in Him as the Hashab, but arrived at the certitude 
of knowledge that He was the Saviour of the world. The 
Messianic seed had fallen on favourable ground. The un- 
Jewish friendliness of Master and disciple may have more than 
disarmed prejudice, and converted it into goodwill. This epi- 
sode must have been a sort of holiday, a time of refreshing, 
among the months of disappointed labour. 

Just as Jesus announced Himself the Messiah, the disciples 
came up and marvelled at His breach of etiquette. An inci- 
dental touch reveals the eye-witness. " She left the water-pot" 
(John iv. 28). It was filled but forgotten, for other water had 
been tasted. The rapid faith of the woman bore rapid fruit. As 
the whitening ears, so the ripening harvest of the Samaritans 
spread out before them. Some, perhaps, were actually approach- 
ing the well. The Messianic evidence which convinced the 
Samaritans was the Messiah Himself. 

If the Messianic purification of the Temple be regarded as 
only an indirect confession of Messiahship, the first direct 
declaration was this. It seems better to seek the fitness in 
spiritual causation than in prudential policy, as some have done. 
The Samaritans were strangers to the political Messianic hope, 
and may have been riper on this ground for spiritual develop- 
ment. But the success which attended Christ's personal minis- 
try continued to attend upon that of His servants a few years 
later. The memory of the Messiah kept alive, and the shame 
of the Cross He suffered at Jewish hands would have been a 
lesser barrier to Samaritan belief. 

After " the two days of" Samaritan work (John iv. 43), per- 
haps passing through Herod's magnificent Sebaste, once 
Samaria, now Sebustieh, where remains of Archelaus' temple to 
Augustus still are found, Jesus came across the plain of (i El 
Buttauf " into Galilee. His fame had already preceded Him. 
The eye-witnesses of His works at Jerusalem spread it abroad. 
Perhaps there was some touch of provincial pride in welcoming 
the distinguished Galilean Prophet whom " His own " Judaea 
had rejected. Cana is the scene of a second miracle. Possibly 
the son of Chuza, Herod's court official, is the restored sufferer. 
The Galilean ministry, which follows/ is briefly summed up in 
1 Vide Edersheim against. Tischendorf, &c. 



88 JESUS CHRIST. 

Mark i. 15 (Matt. iv. 17 ; Luke iv. 15). The cry of the Baptist 
is resumed, but with the addition, " believe in the gospel." 
Many must have heard the former appeal, and were ready for 
its fulfilment. Later, if not sooner, these, or some of them, 
recruited the ranks of the Christian brotherhood, and may have 
been some amongst the five hundred and more who beheld the 
risen Christ, and among others who spread northward to 
Antioch and Damascus. 

The next scene opens at Nazareth. Jesus has returned to His 
own Galileans. Jesus had declared Himself in the Temple, the 
one centre of Jewish worship. He now declares Himself in the 
other centre, the Synagogue. He came as was His Sabbath 
wont. He is invited to act as the Sheliach Tsibbur. Facing the 
sanctuary, with His back to the people, He leads their devo- 
tions. After introductory prayers the Shema, or " Hear," is 
recited. The form of prayer follows (Tephillah), i.e., the Eigh- 
teen Eulogies, or Benedictions (Shemoneh Esreh). Of the 
present nineteen, some, notably the three first and three last, 
are of great antiquity. As these have left a marked, but as yet 
unexplored, 1 influence upon Christian devotion, and as we may 
so catch some echo of the public devotions of Christ upon this 
occasion, the first and second only may be quoted 2 for fear of 
length, and a fragment of the eighteenth. 

1. " Blessed art Thou O Lord our God, and the God of our 
fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob, the God great and powerful and terrible, God most High, 
who bestowest Thy benefits graciously, the Possessor of the 
Universe, who rememberest the good deeds of the fathers and 
sendest a redeemer unto their sons' sons for Thy Name's sake 
in love. Our King, our Helper and Saviour and Shield, blessed 
art Thou, O Lord, the Shield of Abraham." 

2. " Thou art Mighty for ever, O Lord ; Thou bringest the 
dead to life, Thou art mighty to save. Thou sustainest the 
living by Thy mercy, Thou bringest the dead to life by Thy 
great compassion, Thou supportest them that fall, and healest 

1 The relation of Synagogue prayers to early liturgies awaits inquiry. 
The development of early liturgies from various germs is a subject requiring 
the attention of liturgiologists, and as a basis the examination of MSS. 
and the continuation of Canon Swainson's labours. 

2 Bishop Lightfoot, "Clemens Romanus," ii. 461. "Dictionary of 
Christian Antiquities." i. p. 1022 ; and Schiirer, ii. 85. 



THE NAZARENE. 89 

the sick, and loosest them that are in bonds, and makest good 
Thy faithfulness to them that sleep in the dust. Who is like 
unto Thee, O Lord of might ? and who can be compared unto 
Thee, O King, who killest and makest alive, and causest salva- 
tion to shoot forth ? And Thou art faithful to bring the dead 
to life, Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who bringest the dead to 
life " ; — and the last clause of the eighteenth Benediction, so 
suggestively pathetic to a Messiahless people — 

" And may it seem good in Thy sight to bless Thy people 
Israel at all times and at every moment with Thy peace. Blessed 
art Thou, O Lord, who blessest Thy people Israel with peace." 

And so patient are the words of Christian adoption and 
adaptation that we are not surprised to find traces of them in 
the long liturgical prayer at the end of St. Clement's Epistle to 
the Romans, and possibly in the Greek Liturgy of St. Mark, 
and the " introductory part of the present Greek Office is a 
Christianized epitome of the first eight." x 

After the seventeenth followed the threefold blessing pro- 
nounced by the priests, or offered as a prayer in their absence. 
The congregation said Amen. They had prayed standing. 
They now sit to hear the first lesson, from the Thorah, on 
Sabbath mornings ; and the second from the Prophets, the 
Haphtarah. The Methurgeman stands by the reader to trans- 
late the Biblical Hebrew into the current Aramaic. The sermon 
{Derashah) follows. This was the form which the teaching in 
the synagogues so often mentioned in the New Testament and 
in Philo took, and which in Apostolic Missions supplied the 
basis for the new Evangel. 

Jesus stood to read the lection from the Prophets : Himself 
targumed it ; and sat down to deliver His first Nazareth ser- 
mon. It was a personal claim to be the Hope of Israel. But 
words of light and power were insufficient to change obstinate 
prejudices. The claim was too absolute for local bias and 
narrow hearts, unconvicted of sin sickness. 

"Without the city wall," 

as later, the rebellious answer is given. The site of precipita- 
tion is still seen on the hill above the Maronite Church, where 
they would have pushed Him down (Luke iv. 29). It is a sharp 
descent of forty feet. 

1 Freeman, " Divine Service," i. p. 64. 



CHAPTER XI.i 

THE DIVINE GALILEAN. 

" I shut my door against my Saviour, but, lo, He stands before me day 
and night as a prisoner, whom His own mighty love hath enchained in the 
house of His beloved child" (An Indian poet of "The New Dispensa- 
tion "). 

Capernaum — The unknown feast at Jerusalem — Galilee in Christ's time 
and now — Galilean labours. 

Nazareth is left to its darkness. Capernaum becomes the 
Christian mission centre. The Light shines upon the land of 
Zabulon, the way of the sea becomes the way of the King (Matt, 
iv. 15). What better centre of the new spiritual industry could 
be found than busy thriving Capernaum ? Capernaum was a 
fishing, an agricultural, and a mercantile centre. Fishermen, 
shipbuilders, dyers, weavers, stonecutters, jostled with the cara- 
vans from Egypt and the sea-coast, backwards and forwards to 
Damascus and the East. 

The controversy respecting the site of Capernaum is as yet 
unclosed. Tell Hum and Khan Minyeh are the rival claimants; 
but as they are within two and a half miles of one another 
neither can be far wrong. Tell Hum is supported by the balance 
of authority, and the suggestion that Bethsaida was the fishing 
suburb of Capernaum seems a very likely one. 

The return visit of Jesus to an unnamed feast at Jerusalem 
is recorded with much detail by the fourth Evangelist (John v. 
1-47). The feast, a feast merely according to the better read- 
ing, 1 appears to have been that of Trumpets, 2 the new moon of 

1 Westcott and Hort, Tregelles, and R.V. omit t}, but Tischendorf and 
Gebhardt retain it. 2 Westcott, u. v. 



THE DIVINE GALILEAN. 91 

September, shortly before the Day of Atonement. The 
Messianic crisis centred in the feast. The great question be- 
came more urgent. Upon this visit Jesus directly formulates 
His Messianic claim, 1 and His equality with God. This had 
been implied in the Temple cleansing. His works are the evi- 
dence which accredits Him. As so often, the increasing contra- 
diction of sinners called out the clearer statement of truth. 
Christ on His defence must vindicate His authority. His own 
cause and work He identified with John's ; but as the greater 
contains the less, the perfect flower, the spring bud. His works 
in the present must be considered in the light of the immediate 
past of the Johannine work, and the historic testimony of their 
acknowledged Scriptures. Christ, then, appealed to history like 
Christianity ; and like Christianity to the inward light of the 
human heart. Whoso had the Divine in him would recognize the 
Divine in Himself. The Messianic conflict had not now begun, 
as some say, but it had deepened. The Jews, i.e., the Sanhedrist 
party, are standing in sharp outlines on a hostile horizon. The 
whole controversy took occasion, but not cause, from three 
several festal healings — this at Bethesda of the impotent man ; 
the second of the man born blind at Jerusalem ; the third, and 
most victorious, and unpardonable, the resurrection of Lazarus. 

A decisive step had been taken. No disciples appear to 
have attended Him. The final call had not as yet separated 
them for His work. The brief ministry in Galilee had been the 
first effort. The great Galilean ministry in its full sweep now 
begins, the final call to the fishers of men. Consider the scene 
of the Divine Galilean's Work, 

Galilee in the time of Christ was densely peopled. Josephus 
estimated the number of cities and villages, the smallest of 
which numbered above fifteen thousand inhabitants, at two 
hundred and four. His estimate has usualiy been rejected as 
an absurd exaggeration. But it must be remembered that as 
military governor of that province he had unusual facilities for 
gauging its resources ; that he raised without difficulty an army 
there of above one hundred thousand young men ; and that a 
gross misstatement would have been easily detected. We are 
inclined, therefore, to agree with Dr. Selah Merrill 2 in attach- 
ing more credit to his testimony. In any case Galilee must 

1 Stanton, p. 276, hardly does justice to this. 

2 " Galilee in the Time of Christ " (R.T.S.), p. 63 foil, and p. 19. 



92 JESUS CHRIST. 

have presented to the eye, from outlying heights, the spectacle 
of a sea of habitations, an unbroken sheet of towns, " a land of 
brooks of water, of fountains " (Deut. viii. 7), having in its two 
thousand square miles a possible population of three millions. 

The fertility and beauty of the country at the time are well 
known. It was the "garden of God." It was a "watered 
garden," and the splendid wealth of the soil was turned to the 
best account by the industry and enterprise of a vigorous and 
intelligent agricultural population. 

"All the trees and fruits of Palestine flourished here to 
perfection." To quote again one 1 who has the technical know- 
ledge of years of special study on the spot ; " forests, in many 
cases, covered its mountains and hills, while its uplands, gentle 
slopes, and broader valleys were rich in pastures, meadows, 
cultivated fields, vineyards, olive-groves, and fruit trees of every 
kind. Here, in this garden 'that has no end,' flourished the 
vine, the olive, and the fig ; the oak, the hardy walnut, the 
terebinth, and the hot-blooded palm ; the cedar, cypress, and 
balsam ; the fir-tree, the pine, and sycamore ; the bay-tree, 
the myrtle, the almond, the pomegranate, the citron, and the 
beautiful oleander. These, with still many other forest, fruit, 
and flowering trees, and shrubs, and aromatic plants, together 
with grains and fruits, to which should be added an infinite 
profusion of flowers, made up that wonderful variety of natural 
productions," which smiled in undefiled beauty round the houses 
of Jesus' Galilean work. 

The products of the province were fish, wine, wheat, and oil, 
flax, all in great abundance. The port of Tyre connected the 
Galilean market with consumers from the far West to the far 
East. The lake cities were centres of the fishing industry ; 
Tarichsea seems to have been specially famous for its fish 
factories, and had about forty thousand inhabitants. 

Nor was art very far behind Nature. Architecture was not an 
indigenous Jewish product. The Jews were not great builders. 
But modern critical research and exploration have shown how 
widely Hellenizing influences had spread, and many magnificent 
buildings, temples, theatres, palaces, chiefly under the inspira- 
tion of Herodian taste, covered the land with Grasco-Roman 
monuments. Even the Temple at Jerusalem showed abundant 
traces of the influence of the Grecian style ; just as in Solomon's 
1 Dr. S. Merrill. 



THE DIVINE GALILEAN, 93 

time Memphis, and possibly Nineveh, supplied suggestions/ and 
Tyre, masons and skilled artificers. Synagogues, too, were often 
handsome edifices, with ornate mouldings. "But the Jewish 
ordinary architecture was, on the whole," probably « much what 
is now the natural style of the country,* and "the buddings 
were neither large nor solidly constructed." 2 

The Sea of Galilee has little in common to-day with the 
bright busy populous lake of Christ's time. The purple blush 
of & the oleander still fringes its shore. The green or brown 
hills still "stand about" it. The turf is still starred with 
myriad wild flowers varied and lustrous. The waves still beat 
their monotonous music upon the white shingle. Hermons 
snowy dome still shines afar. But all else is changed. Where 
hundreds of sail winged their whiteness over the sparking 
water, where Herod, Josephus, or Titus could easily collect 
fleets of from three hundred to five hundred vessels, where 
numbers of fisher-folks plied their nightly craft to furnish the 
numerous markets of a densely-crowded neighbourhood, where 
the magnificent Tiberias, lately built by Herod the Great, and 
named after the Roman Emperor, lined the lake-shore for nearly 
three miles with handsome public buildings, temples, the palace 
of the Tetrarch, and fashionable residences, " all built in the 
sumptuous style of Graeco-Roman art with their spacious courts 
surrounded by marble columns, adorned with elaborately carved 
desi-ns, the whole embosomed in palm groves, and gay with 
gardens of tropical luxuriance ;»s where the Plain of Gennesareth 
• spread out its fruit orchards and gardens ; now is the plain all 
but uncultivated, now is a squalid town, now are some rows of 
columns lately discovered by Mr. Schumacher, representing 
Tiberias, now are half-a-dozen miserable villages, the black 
tents and the cattle of the Bedouin on the hillsides, a few 
small dilapidated fishing-boats resting on the banks or moving 
languidly over the waters, the only signs of human life. 4 

" On the shores of this lake might be seen temple after temple 
rearm- their vast colonnades of graceful columns, their courts 
ornamented with faultlessly carved statues to the deities of a 

* Cf. C. R. Conder, "Syrian Stone Lore," p. 122. 

» C. R. Conder in "Survey," iii. p. 44* f- 3 L - 01l P h ! nt * .„ 

4 S. Manning's, "Those Holy Fields," pp. 196, 202 ; Selah Merrill 

" East of the Jordan," p. 461 i L. Oliphant, "Sea of Galilee, English 

Illustrated, December, 1887. 



94 JESUS CHRIST. 

heathen cult. Here were the palaces of the Roman high func- 
tionaries, the tastefully decorated villas of rich citizens, with 
semi-tropical gardens irrigated by the copious streams which 
have their sources in the Plain of Gennesareth and the neigh- 
bouring hills. Here were broad avenues and populous thorough- 
fares, thronged with the motley concourse which so much wealth 
and magnificence had attracted — rich merchants from Antioch, 
then the most gorgeous city of the East, and from the Greek 
islands, traders and visitors from Damascus, Palmyra, and the 
rich cities of the Decapolis ; caravans from Egypt and Persia, 
Jewish Rabbis jostling priests of the worship of the Sun, and 
Roman soldiers swaggering across the market-places, where the 
peasantry were exposing the produce of their fields and gardens 
lor sale!" 1 

In such a hive of half-Hellenized civilization, Oriental com- 
mercial industries, and mixed cultures and faiths, did the little 
body of Christ's workers set to leaven the whole mass. The 
nearest modern parallels are still to be found in the East rather 
than the West. In Calcutta, where the Christian missionary's 
first feeling "is the utter helplessness of his outlook in the face 
of a joyous, idle, universal, self-satisfied, non-Christian life, the 
streets crowded, the students happy and eager, the idolatrous 
processions beautiful as a dream, the burning sun, the beautiful 
flower- trees, the birds singing, the philosophers lightly and 
airily discussing the religious life of the past and of the future, 
the missionary thought of either as a needless bore, or a pleasant 
means Of obtaining an hour or two's logical word-play," 2 and 
overshadowing all the majestic aegis of a foreign government 
and a distant sovereign, just as the Roman official exercised 
dominion over the concourse of mixed multitudes. Or again 
in Bombay, the Indian Tyre, which, like Calcutta, delights to 
call itself " the hall of all the nations," and where all varieties 
of national type and national dress throng the streets, and of 
the Christians, European or native, the question asks itself, 
" What are they among so many ? " 

Capernaum was a suitable base as the home of growing faith 
(Luke iv. 31). Here lived the court officer and his son. Here, 
or close by, dwelt the sons of John and the sons of Zebedee. 

1 L. Oliphant, " Haifa," p. 219. 

2 MS. letter from the late Rev. P. S. Smith of the Oxford Mission to 
Calcutta. 



THE DIVINE GALILEAN. 95 

" Here He would on the Sabbath days preach in that synagogue, 
of which the good centurion was the builder, and Jairus the chief 
ruler." * Here begins a new departure in the life of Jesus. He 
had been a lonely missionary preacher. He had been scattering 
the seed. He now begins to gather in. The Organizer of the 
Church appears for the first time. Simon and Andrew, James 
and John, form the first community of the new kingdom, the first 
spiritually specialized to definite office. They are no longer dis- 
ciples. They are called to the personal fellowship of Messianic 
work and undivided spiritual industry. On the following Sab- 
bath they witness His words and works of power — the unclean 
spirit cast out, the mother-in-law of Simon restored by the touch 
of His hand. The home Simon had given up is already blessed, 
and the sick in the neighbourhood, 

"At even, when the sun was set," 

and the Sabbath over, were graced with the healing touch, one 
by one. 

The Galilean labours which follow, briefly sketched in the 
Synoptists, produced abundant fruit. Two points specially 
marked them (Luke v. ij ; vi. 7). The Rabbinical party, deputed 
from, or instigated by, the Jerusalem faction, were in ceaseless 
and open opposition. The Messianic party was increasing in 
quantity and quality. Another onward step in "organization " 
takes place when Jesus, after the long night-prayer, formally 
selects the Twelve (Luke vi. 12). 

1 Edersheim, i. 457. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE DIVINE APOSTLE. THE DIVINE MORALIST. 

"And these things He taught, not as contrary to the Law, but as fulfilling 
the Law, and rooting within us the means whereby the Law maketh 
righteous'' (Iken.eus iv. xiii. i, translated by Keble). 

" What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others (Con- 
fucius' "Golden Rule''). 

The selection of the Twelve — Organization of the Divine society — Organi. 
zation of the life — Code of the New Kingdom in its past, present, and 
future revelations. 

The site of the selection of the Twelve and the delivery of the 
Sermon on the Mount was evidently well known in the early 
Church. It is termed by the Synoptists "the mountain" simply, 
perhaps as being so well known to Christians as a habitual 
resort of Christ and His disciples, and possibly, in after-time, as 
to require no specifying ; or there may have been no name to 
this one of the many heights in the neighbourhood. Tradition 
regards the Horns of Hattin (Kurun Hattin) as the place, and 
many moderns are disposed to assent to it. 

The appointment of the Twelve Apostles was an example of 
supernatural rather than natural selection. It was a spiritual 
differentiation of the fittest of the disciples according to Divine, 
not human valuation. The chosen of the chosen were summoned 
to step into the inner circle which should share the Lord's inti- 
macy, and constitute the governing body of the Church. The 
inclusion of Judas is one of the unsealed mysteries of God's pre- 
destination. It was only after a night of prayer that Jesus de- 
cided upon His final choice. An unseen Hand pointed them 
out. They did not choose Him ; He chose them. How shall 



THE DIVINE APOSTLE. 97 

they preach except they be sent ? He was the Apostle of the 
Father, the authorized and accredited Messenger ; they were the 
Apostle's Apostles {Malachim). Their authority was derivative, 
as their teaching was in His Name. Their present mission and 
commission was preliminary and local. Their promotion to 
world-wide jurisdiction was at present unrevealed, and, as the 
case of the traitor proves, conditioned by their faithfulness in 
service. 

Of these twelve, Judas, the man of Kerioth, alone was of 
Judean origin ; the others were Galileans. The Galilean 
character formed the best ethical basis for the elevating power 
of the new kingdom. The Galileans were men of loyal and 
patriotic spirit, intelligent, active, laborious. They were fashioned 
of the stolid stuff and high spirit which make good soldiers and 
merchants, from the days when Zebulon and Napthali jeoparded 
their lives unto the death in the high places of the field (Judg. 
v. 18), to the days when the fighting men of Japha beat back 
the Roman soldiers till twelve thousand of the former fell. They 
were free children of nature, filled with the sunny breath of 
their own highlands. Their reality, their manliness, their 
perfervidum ingenium, their zeal for the law apart from tradi- 
tion, stood in sharp contrast to the artificially religious and self- 
seeking political Rabbis, who would — 

" Make of God their tame confederate, 
Purveyor to their appetites." x 

These Twelve were in an eminent degree meant to be living 
gospels — personal Christ-forces, Christ-organs. The trans- 
mission of the faith was dependent, in the first instance, upon 
living depositaries, personal eye- and ear-witnesses. The faith 
and the life are alike one. Christ alone is the source of either. 
Human media are strictly media between Him and His. Life 
and faith were meant to co-exist, hence living agents propagated 
the Divine life and the Divine faith before any documentary 
embodiment of either. The Church existed before the Bible. 
What God hath joined together let not man put asunder. 

The number Twelve was significant. It indicated that under 
the Messianic King they would rule the twelve tribes of Israel. 
The organization of the official element in the Church to all time 

1 R. Browning, *' Pippa Passes.' 
8 



95 JESUS CHRIST. 

lay in this germ. In Christ is the fulness of all functions — ruling, 
evangelizing, pastoral, prophetic. Church officers claim but 
delegated authority. The dependence of the Apostles upon 
Christ was absolute, at first more " outward and unconscious," x 
afterwards more inward, self-intelligible. At first they were 
servants, they became friends ; they never ceased to be children. 
The manifestation of His own life and character indirectly, as 
well as directly, was the leading factor in their moral, spiritual 
training. Only after He left them visibly did He become an 
inward formative force. His personal influence was at first 
outward — an example, a voice, a manner, a temper, a look, a 
conversation. Later on these passed into the memory and 
very life as an abiding power. From without He passed within, 
to interpenetrate, to transform, to spiritualize. 

The Sermon on the Mount was the natural and immediate 
sequel to the nomination of the officers of the kingdom. It 
was the official manifesto of the moral code of the kingdom. 
It was addressed, in the first place, to the new officers ; in the 
second, to all the children and children's children of the king- 
dom. It was, above all, a definition of character ; a statement 
of principles, rather than a promulgation of rules. It had re- 
lations to the past, to the present, to the future. To the past ; 
for He, the Lawgiver, came to fulfil all righteousness, to conserve 
and to reinforce all the moral force, and colour, and authority of 
the old covenant ; to give finality to what was partial and incom- 
plete ; to develop incipient morals to the full length, and breadth, 
and depth, and height of a perfect organism. To the past ; 
for all the moral thinkings of all previous non-Jewish moral 
teachers were here recognized, revised, and re-issued. The 
Divine Law, as approached in varying degrees in divers ethical 
schools — Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Persian, Greek, 
Roman — is here, so far as true, and therefore authentically 
Divine, ratified and confirmed. The moral system of Bud- 
dhism, for instance, so far as its theory goes, occupies the 
highest place among non-Christian religions The five com- 
mandments are as follows : " Not to kill (anything that has 
life) : not to steal : not to lie : not to drink what can intoxicate : 
not to commit adultery." 2 And the Buddhist commandments, 

1 Neander, p. 126. 

2 Professor Kellogg, " The Light of Asia and the Light of the World," 
p. 270 following. 



THE DIVINE MORALIST. 99 

just as the Mosaic interpreted by prophet and psalmist in 
distant approximation to Christ, reached beyond the letter 
to the disposition of the heart. Thus we read that the 
Buddha, on one occasion, being asked to declare *' the highest 
blessing," answered in words such as the following : — 

" Waiting on father and mother, protecting child and wife, 
and a quiet calling, this is the highest blessing. ' Giving alms, 
living religiously, protecting relatives, blameless deeds, this is 
the highest blessing,' " &c. 

But it must be remembered parenthetically, to avoid mis- 
understanding, that these higher Buddhist flights must be taken 
in connection with their whole code, which has no conception 
of a personal God, no conception of a moral obligation, or 
authoritativeness, which is " law " only by a transference of ideas 
without a lawgiver. If the Mosaic law could not give life, 
much less could the highest non-Jewish, such as the Buddhist. 1 
And the moral weakness of Buddhism is too notorious and 
patent to need illustration. 

As non-Jewish moral teachings so above all the Jewish law 
given by Moses, glorified in countless Psalms, vindicated and 
enforced by prophets and men of God, striven after by the 
righteous remnant in every generation, was reaffirmed and 
certified. Its inviolability, its absolute validity, its catholicity 
reasserted and authenticated, not word by word, and detail by 
detail, but as a whole and by typical examples. 

But there was more than reaffirmation of the past righteous- 
ness. There was expansion, creative development, progress 
inward and spiritual. " In five cardinal points of the moral 
code " 2 the new righteousness is contrasted with the old : in 
the law of murder, the law of oaths, the law of adultery, the law 
of retaliation, the law of charity. The public placard of the 
Decalogue is taken down and rewritten upon the heart. The 
sources of good and evil, the inward springs of thought and 
life, are dealt with at their centre and focus. Thought and look 
and gesture are traversed and scrutinized. 

If the Law of Christ had simply been a more stringent pro- 
vision than the Mosaic, covering a wider field, and penetrating 

1 Professor Kellogg, p. 280 following, and the express declarations of 
such experienced and credible eye-witnesses of Buddhism, as Bishops 
Schereschewsky and Copleston, or Dr. Edkins. 

* Rev. S. Cox, D.D., " Expository Essays and Discourses," p. 12. 



IOO JESUS CHRIST, 

into deeper chambers — where had been the possibility of ful- 
filling commands which in their earlier form were beyond 
attainment? With the new law Christ, but not till after His 
Resurrection, liberated a new power. The Christian's life is a 
reproduction of Christ's life. His energy is transformed and 
conveyed into the Christian. Communion with Him is a 
scientific necessity of spiritual obedience. Faith is the line 
along which the currents of spiritual energy pass ; and Sacra- 
ments are the means of His communications of life. 

With regard to the present, its synchronal position, the whole 
required to be interpreted in the light of the Life of the Law- 
giver. He spake by authority and He exemplified by authority. 
The Blessed above blessed ones revealed and exhibited every 
beatitude. With Him the law was not external, it was not 
imposed from without ; it was the expression of His own inner 
nature. The Law Royal was a reflex of the Royal Mind. 

In its positive aspects and in its negative the Royal life was 
the best commentary on the Royal Law. He was Himself the 
exponent. His example expressed it in the concrete. When- 
ever the disciples had difficulties about the application of 
principle to different details, they had the ever-speaking like- 
ness of the Law obeying Himself. The Royal Law was to 
Him a perfect law of liberty, and became so to all who took 
the yoke freely upon them of Him, " cui servire libertas." 

In this the most effective of all ways, that of personal 
influence, the apostles were trained to deal with moral problems- 
The gospel in contact with the degraded morals of corrupt 
society had. as it often has now, to create moral demands before 
supplying them. The gospel had to meet most perplexing 
problems in applying, the sweetness and light of moral truth to 
the various complications of artificial, often highly civilized, but 
rotten society. One of the sayings of the Lord, unrecorded in 
the Gospels, capable of wide application, "it is more blessed to 
give than to receive," is an instance of many others which in His 
own life-time, and in the life-time of His ear-witnesses, became 
fruitful principles of action, and useful guides of conduct. 

Such difficult questions as those of caste and polygamy which 
confront the Christian missionary of to-day were present to-the 
after-experience of the apostles and disciples. Those who had 
occupied the pre-eminent place of being eye-witnesses of the 
Word of Life had two first principles which they could apply. 



THE DIVINE MORALIST. IOI 

What did the Lord say ? What did the Lord do ? Simple, 
untutored minds, without other culture than that of the Lord's 
life and words engraven on a memory quick with the strong 
pulse of love, and fortified by the re-creative inrlux of the Spirit, 
were thus enabled to cope with the mental and moral obstacles 
to belief, and the mental and moral difficulties of planting, pre- 
serving, and perpetuating the holy stock of the faith in noisome, 
unclean social soils, and hotbeds of civilized vice, in nurseries of 
deeply rooted, widely ramified evil, strong in possession, in inte- 
rest, in degenerate undisturbed heredity. 

And in its immediate applications, the Law had negative re- 
lations. It was polemical. It was the unqualified contradic- 
tion of the fashionable authorized moral teaching and living. 
The best Rabbinical ethics may be found in the small 
Talmudical Tractate Pirke Aboth ; * and at every point of con- 
tact pale in comparison. The moral teaching of the day, 
allowing for exceptions, resolved itself into personal and 
national selfishness. Righteousness was an acquisition, not a 
gift, purchasable by individual merit. Individual merit was 
consciously created, valued, and asserted. " My humility is my 
greatness, and my greatness, my humility," said Rabbi Hillel. 
The famous Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai would say, " I have seen 
the children of the world to come, and they are few. If there 
are three. I and my son are of their number ; if they are 
two, I and my son are they." 

And not only had the current moral teaching to be negatived, 
or transformed, where capable of transformation, ethics had to 
be raised to a new position. An externalism like that of 
Brahminism had to be dethroned. Rabbinism had debased 
the whole theocratic system. Morals were enslaved. Action 
was chained and bound in a systematized machinery of fetters. 
The polemic of Christ against the Pharisees and Sadducees 
was the absolutely necessary condition of creating a healthy 
moral standard. Between Christian law and Rabbinical there 
was no reconciliation. It was a life-and-death question. One 
or the other must perish. The Sermon on the Mount was the 
epoch of the new birth of moral life. It was as life from the 
dead. 

One or two examples of the legalism and formalism from which 
men were delivered will suffice. No less than twelve treatises 
1 See Dr. Taylor's convenient edition and notes. 



102 JESUS CHRIST. 

of the Mishna, filling the whole of the last part, deal with 
ordinances relating to cleanness and uncleanness, such as the 
defilement of hollow earthen vessels, of metal vessels of which 
"the mouth and the hollow are capable of defilement. If they 
are broken they are clean ; if vessels are again made out of 
them they are in their former uncleanness." The very three 
mementoes, the Tsitsith, the tassels or fringes which every 
Israelite wore at the four corners of his upper garment ; 
the Mesusa, or box fixed to the doors, containing Deut. vi. 9, 
and xi. 20; and the Tephillin, or prayer-straps, which ' every 
male Israelite put on at morning prayer, except on Sabbaths and 
holy days, probably of scriptural origin, and of great value 
rightly used, were debased to a thousand superstitious prescrip- 
tions about knots and threads and the like, and were often 
treated as charms. 1 

In regard to the future the permanent force and value of the 
Sermon is witnessed by its own perennial freshness and vitality. 
All moral progress is a pursuit of these ideals. The ideal 
Christian, the ideal righteousness of the individual, the society, 
the Church is here outlined. Christ believed in Himself, in 
His work. He knew His community would last. He knew 
His work would survive His earthly life. He knew its con- 
tinuity to the ages of ages. His action and His words were 
equally prophetic, equally creative, equally indestructible. He 
could trust in His cause, and in human nature. Knowing 
humanity as He did, with the perfect insight of intuition, and 
the experience of active mixture with all classes, and in a 
country where men of all nations met, knowing its worst and 
its best, knowing its worst to Himself to the end, He was 
never a pessimist or a cynic. He was the incarnation of faith 
and hope in human nature, as well as of faith and hope in God. 
He was the lover of humanity, whose delight was to be with 
the sons of men, as well as the destroyer of all the works of 
the devil, and the supreme hater of evil. 

The moral teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is the 
charter of moral life to all Christians. But its influence has 
gone far into non-Christian regions. It leaves its impress 
upon the characters of those who have lost faith in Christian 
doctrine, and upon non-Christian ethical systems like Comtism. 
It attracts with a wonder of joy those who have not learned 
1 Vide Schiirer, ii. 2, § 28. 



THE DIVINE MORALIST. 103 

to believe in Christian doctrine, and leads the more honest and 
enlightened among them on to the full acceptance of the 
doctrine without which it has but permissive value and force. 
Many educated Hindus are now adopting some form of 
Theism. The Brahmo Samaj movement in Calcutta is one of 
the most striking instances. But it is a Theism which is learned 
from Christianity, and with or without acknowledgment borrows 
Christian moral ideas without the sanction upon which they 
rest. Some have found this out, and have been consistent 
enough to embrace the creed which underlies the morality. 
The Rev. Nehemiah Goreh, the eminent missionary, is a 
notable example, and the promise of more. He affirms, " I 
know, and am as sure as of my own existence, that I learnt 
Theism from Christianity, and, I also know, that Christianity 
alone does teach it, and that from Christianity alone it can be 
learnt." x 

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Christ formulated for all 
time the principles of the Christian character. His faith was 
a school of character. He Himself was a trainer of special 
character. Character was to be the human propagating power 
of His truth. His immediate teaching was a technical edu- 
cation in spirituality. All the graces and gifts of Christian 
character were perfectly embodied in Him, and transcribed, 
reproduced in varying approximations by those on whom He 
stamped the ineffable beauty of His image, and the lustrous 
light of His native force. His spiritual children were to be His 
speaking likenesses. 

His character, like His truth, was progressively revealed. 
Cross lights beat upon it ; counter currents, fierce oppositions, 
fought against it ; but as the darkness increased it shone brighter 
and brighter, as hatred waxed and wove fresh combinations, 
newer lights and fuller beauties flashed forth from the furnace. 
The complete ascendency of His character, the full apprecia- 
tion of it, the true measure of it were only won by the Resur- 
rection. That was the beginning of the final victory of 
character which was consummated at Pentecost. From that 
moment the victory of the Christ, and Christ-derived character 
over all contradictory ideals, was assured. Human life in all its 
moral relations has never lost, and can never lose, that ideal. 

1 "Occasional Papers of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta,'' quoted by 
Rev. E. F. Taylor, on Indian Theism, Mission Life, Feb., 1883. 



104 JESUS CHRIST. 

It is of eternal validity, of universal worth and potency, and 
is an everlasting spring and fountain-head of like characters, in 
all the provinces of human life, in all the possible develop- 
ments of moral loveliness and strength and truth. While He 
lived on earth His eye was always upon His pupils. In their 
missionary works and tentative transient evangelizations, they 
could always refer to Him. He superintended, He dictated. 
This revealed His public character under various difficulties and 
emergencies, and prepared them to deal with the like when He 
was gone. 

The Sermon on the Mount was the official manifesto of in- 
carnate moral truth and life. Viewed in connection with His 
whole life-work, it was the beginning of the transfiguration of 
character, of the transformation of morals ; the beginning not 
the end. The end was sacrifice, and that could only be under- 
stood after He who pleased not Himself had officially an- 
nounced : 

"it is finished." 

The Ten Beatitudes are the ten words of the new law 
corresponding to the ten of the old. They are the prototypal 
moral ideas of the gospel. They are marks of the ideal 
Christian ; one and all perfectly manifest in the Divine Man. 
The last two Beatitudes were specially suggestive of suffering, 
and a prophecy of the progressive victoriousness of suffering. 
The kingdom was one built upon triumphant pain. " In this 
world all good, even the fairest and noblest — as love — rests upon 
a ' dark ground,' which it has to consume with pain and con- 
vert into pure spirit." * This truth was one which had re- 
peatedly to be pressed upon the disciples. For current Jewish 
teaching regarded suffering as the reward of sin, and even the 
pure pre-Christian scriptural sufferers had fallen back baffled 
before the dark mystery. And in their present stage of 
Messianic experience the disciples had but tasted the cup, and 
were sheltered by an overpowering strength and sympathy. 

The organization of the Christian body, and the organization 
of the Christian life, were correlative. The words of the Sermon 
presupposed in the future an organized community, a recog- 
nizable brotherhood. The exact form of the body wherein the 

x Rothe, quoted by Professor Martineau. 



THE DIVINE MORALIST. 105 

spirit should be ensouled is as yet undefined. It was not the 
method of Christ to seal systems upon living forces before the 
spirit within needed some embodiment, visible, social. The 
Kingdom of God centred in the King while He lived and 
worked on the earthly scene. He would define in word and 
create in practice the character and life which should stamp the 
children of the kingdom. He would breathe into them the 
breath of the new royal life before any outward organization 
was dowered with the royal charter. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE DIVINE ART TEACHER. THE DIVINE NATURE-WORKER. 
THE DIVINE MISSIONARY. 

"A sweet attractive kind of grace ; 
A full assurance given by looks ; 
Continual comfort in a face, 
The lineaments of gospel books — 
I trow that countenance cannot lye, 
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye." 

" Friend's Passion for his Astrophel." 

Capernaum — Nain — The Baptist in Machaerus — The Saviour and the lost 
woman — Divine self-assertion — Spiritual industry — Parables of Divine 
art interpret Nature — Miracle of power over Nature — Demonism — 
Incessant labours - Mission tours — The martyr of Machaerus — The 
Feeding of the Five Thousand — The Bread of Life — The stormy lake 
— The contradiction of sinners — Passover retreat — Back to work. 

Jesus descended from the mountain of Beatitudes, and entered 
into Capernaum (Luke vii. i). The crowds had not dispersed. 
The spell of His presence and His words lay upon them. They 
still followed Him. They witnessed the prayer of the large- 
hearted centurion, the wonder of the Lord at his faith connect- 
ing itself with the promise of many more of Gentile blood 
entering into the kingdom of heaven. This last word, coming 
upon us as a surprise in the Jewish Gospel (Matt. viii. n), was 
one of those germs which would fructify in the after-teaching of 
the disciples. The evidential force of it should not be over- 
looked. The Divine Galilean boldly announced the world 
width of the kingdom of heaven, and flatly contradicted the 
whole stream of current teaching and national jealousy, by not 
only admitting, but preferring the " children of hell," in Rab- 



THE DIVINE ART TEACHER. I07 

binical language, to the "royal" posterity of Abraham. The 
unique faith of the straightforward soldier was the spark which 
kindled the prophetic fire. By a natural association of ideas, 
Jesus already saw in him the march of a vast army of likeminded 
soldiers of Christ. 

The reward of faith was followed by a miracle where no faith 
could have found place, or is unrecorded (Luke vii. 1 1). Victory 
over death follows victory over disease. On the next day, 1 or 
shortly after, 2 still accompanied by crowds, sailing perhaps down 
the lake, and then, taking one of the still existing roads, Christ 
came to what was then a city, Nain, some twenty miles from 
Capernaum. Nain, in " its green nest " on the edge of" Little 
Hermon," well deserved its descriptive name, " the pleasant." 3 
The name Nein still lingers over the squalid huts which mark 
the site. 

The two streams met at the gate, probably on the east, where 
the "rough rock was full of sepulchral caves, which still exist." 
The only Son of His Mother feels for the mother of an only 
son — and she a widow. The body lay face upwards and hands 
folded on the breast, like an effigy on a cathedral sepulchre. 
The bier was open. Jesus came and touched it. The initiative 
was His own. In an instant the spirit of life returned to the 
dead young man. Fear falls upon the whole multitude, mourners 
with the tears yet upon their cheeks, and those who had now 
witnessed a greater triumph than any that went before. What 
was the spiritual link between the Divine power and the lifeless 
youth ? Some think 4 he died with an intense prayerful yearn- 
ing for life. We would rather leave it among the unrevealed 
mysteries and suggested potencies of blessed hope. 

Tidings of Jesus' works came to the heroic spirit whom Herod 
had cast into his fortress prison. St. John was in the palace 
fortress of Machasrus, now M'Kaur. The castle, standing 
"starkly bold and clear/' 5 3,860 feet above the Dead Sea, 2,546 
above the Mediterranean, dominated the whole country round 
like some dark angel. Here Herod occupied at once a splendid 
palace and a frontier rampart against Arab marauders Within 
the waste of ruins which now mark the spot the two dungeons 
of the citadel still remain, " the small holes still visible in the 

1 evry afyg, Gebhardt, Tischendorf. 2 iv r<£, Hort. 

3 Hugh Macmillan, " Our Lord's Three Raisings from the Dead," p. 75. 

4 Godet. s J. G. Whittier. 



108 JESUS CHRIST. 

masonry, where staples of wood and iron had once been fixed." 1 
One of these was probably the last home of the free son of the 
wilderness. 

Never did life's work seem a more complete failure. St. John 
knew how God's people had treated God's messengers of old. 
But was the kingdom of heaven still but a floating light upon 
the retreating hills of prophecy ? and the immediate future as 
dark as the mountain walls which girdled his dungeon ? The 
uttermost isolation, bodily and spiritual, the horror of encom- 
passing darkness left its trace upon the strong spirit. The iron 
entered into his soul. The second Elias, like the first, faltered. 
To face his own doubts, and to satisfy for ever himself and the 
faithful disciples, who still sought his rocky cell, he would put 
the question to Him alone who could answer it. " Art Thou the 
Coming One {habba\ the Man of the Future, or do we, T and 
my school of faith, wait for another ? " The answer came, 
clothed in the language of the Messianic prophet, 2 whose words 
and spirit were the life-breath of all the creed and teaching of 
John. The benedictory warning 3 is added rather to hearten 
the disciples than their master, " Blessed is he, whosoever shall 
not be offended in Me." The brevity of the dismissal may have 
been needed to quicken the dull flame of their convictions. 
When they departed lest their weakness should reflect on the 
Baptist, Christ lifted up His voice in unqualified praise of him 
who was a prophet, and more exceeding a prophet. Yet, stand- 
ing outside His Kingdom, he was less than the lesser within. 
Holy violence such as his could alone force an entrance into its 
gates. Yet this generation was like fretful children, who would 
neither mourn with the ascetic nor rejoice with the joy of the 
Messiah. 

In St. Luke's record a dramatic incident follows (vii. 36). Our 
Lord's dealings with women, and women's dealings with Him, 
form an instructive study, and show marked contrasts with the 
Rabbinical theory and practice. The woman who came through 
the open door into the house of Simon the Pharisee was a fallen 
one, possibly a notorious professional harlot of the town. It 
may have been Mary of Magdala, whose name is mentioned so 
soon afterwards. Three figures are prominent in the company. 

1 Tristram, " Land of Moab," p. 259 ; Edersheim. 

2 Isa. xxxv. 5, sq. ; xxix. 18, sq. ; xlii. 7 ; lxi. 1, sq. 

3 Not " public censure," as Keim. 



THE DIVINE ART TEACHER. I09 

The Holy One, all tenderness and truth ; the smooth Pharisee, 
coldly civil, critically unsympathetic ; the penitent daughter of 
affliction, gliding in unabashed in the glory of her passion and 
her tears. Modern verse and art have combined to halo the 
gently audacious guest raining the dew of her tears and kisses 
upon His feet, and the perfumed ointment from her flask upon 
His head. 

"Oh, loose me ! See'stthou not my Bridegroom's face 
That draws me to Him ? For His feet my kiss, 
My hair, my tears, He craves to-day ; and oh ! 
What words can tell what other day and place 

Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His ? 
He needs me, calls me, loves me ; let me go." 1 

Such conduct from her, and towards Him, is unthinkable of 
any contemporary Rabbi, and was immediately challenged. So, 
often, the good works of Christ, perhaps always, were accom- 
panied or followed by some revelation of the power of evil, some 
liberation of defeated spite, to mar His happiness in well-doing, 
and to counterwork its activity. Criticism turned this time upon 
a crucial question — " Who is this that even 2 forgiveth sins ? " 
It was a personal question. The answer turned upon His Nature 
and Office. Christ indirectly asserts both, and so far from with- 
drawing or explaining the implied authority, reaffirms it by His 
dismissal, " Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in peace." 

Attention must here be drawn to our Lord's repeated as- 
sertions of His own Nature and office. Sometimes directly, 
sometimes indirectly, sometimes openly, sometimes by impli- 
cation, sometimes by word, sometimes by deed, He avows 
Himself more than man, and the equal of God. Unless these 
assertions were bond fide Christ was a self-deceived impostor, 
or a deceiver whose influence was, as His enemies declared, of 
Satanic origin. We are left in this dilemma. We are shut up 
between these alternatives. The verdict must rest with the 
sound heart and pure conscience. To maintain that Christ 
was a self-deceived enthusiast is an outrage upon common 
sense. If any man was sane and whole-hearted, clear in mind 
and purpose, able to convince others of His absolute wisdom, 

1 D. G. Rossetti. 

2 So R.V., if as A. V., the kcl'l would suggest forgiveth sins, as well as 
treating sinners thus. 



IIO JESUS CHRIST. 

truth, and holiness, it was this Man, it is this Man. Either 
He was honest, or He was dishonest. In the last resort this is 
the final issue. Upon the answer to this question, the whole 
past of Christianity depends, the whole present, and the whole 
future. The believer echoes St. Paul's "audacious challenge" 1 
from the inner heart of His own experience, if Christ be not 
risen then are we of men most wretched ; and so far from 
admitting it to belong to " a past stage of religious develop- 
ment " 2 regards it as the decisive issue upon which ail future 
history depends, and the pledge of the advancing triumph of 
Christ's kingdom, as well as the absolute basis of his own in- 
ward and outward life. 

The rapid ingathering of the multitudes, and the special 
selection of the Twelve, and the manifold works of healing are 
indirect evidence of the Lord's intense activity. His work was 
the travail of a spirit held in leash for thirty silent years of 
praying, bursting forth with the fire and impetus of economized 
power. A vast reserve of spiritual energy had been accumu- 
lating for the day of work. The springs of love and grace 
were flowing unchecked. Viewed merely as a piece of human 
labour, the Lord's industry at this time was that of incarnate 
Work. While the apostles must have tested the powers which 
they were "sent" to exercise, He bore the burden and heat of 
the day, and the solitary diadem of responsibility. Among His 
helpers we find mention of many women (Luke viii. 2), one of 
whom, at least Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, 
was of the upper classes. 

The first recorded parable was spoken at this time. Our 
Lord's sympathy with Nature was not only artistic, it was moral. 
The poet interprets the beautiful in Nature, the physicist the 
order of facts ; Christ drew out the moral and the spiritual 
revelation. Job had seen something of this. Isaiah too, and 
the Psalmists. But Christ was the first to emphasize the 
unity between Nature and grace. His parables are translations 
of the order of Nature into the order of grace. He created 
the parable. 3 Apologues are found such as Judges ix. 8 and 
foil., 2 Sam. xii. 1, but the parable was a spiritual work of art 
unattempted before. The Buddhist parables of the so-called 
" Sower " and " Prodigal Son " may be compared not as 

1 J. A. Symonds, Fortnightly Review, ccxlvi. p. 895. 

2 Ibid. 3 Renan, p. 136. 



THE DIVINE ART TEACHER. Ill 

possessing " exactly the same tone and the same character," as 
M. Renan affirms, but as allegorical tales and images suggesting 
doctrinal or moral lessons. 1 

The parable in form is a work of art. Truth is taught 
mediately ; the truth of spirit enshrined in matter. The moral 
function of art is best taught in one of its highest teacher's 
words. 

" Why take the artistic way to prove so much ? 
Because, it is the glory and good of Art, 
That Art remains the one way possible 
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least. 
How look a brother in the face and say, 
' Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou yet art blind, 
Thine ears are stopped and stuffed, despite their length, 
And, oh, the foolishness thou countest faith ! ' 
Say this as silverly as tongue can troll — 
The anger of the man may be endured, 
The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him, 
Are not so bad to bear — but there's the plague 
That all this trouble comes of telling truth, 
Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false, 
Seems to be just the thing it would supplant, 
Nor recognizable by whom it left — 
While falsehood would have done the work of truth." 
But Art, wherein man speaks to men, 
Only to mankind — Art may tell a truth 
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought, 
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word." 2 

The first parable contains under its landscape colouring a 
complete moral classification. It is a work of the master of 
spiritual analysis. It is a scientific arrangement, valid for all 
times and places, of human hearts in experimental contact with 
the Word of God. That Word is the seed truth of the kingdom, 
and was spoken in His pre-incarnate days by the Word through 
human organs, and was now spoken by Himself. All human 
hearts upon whose soil the word fell, falls, and will fall, from 
the hand of the Sower, or His ministers and workers, are here 
classed in four divisions. They are not arranged upon arith- 

1 Cf. Rhys Davids, " Buddhism," p. 133 f. ; his so-called Parable of the 
Sower is an invidious misnomer, cf. reff. s. I., and Pressense, "The 
Ancient World and Christianity," p. 241, and Bp. Copleston on Buddhism. 

8 R. Browning, " The Ring and the Book," ad fin. 



112 JESUS CHRIST. 

metical principles. They are qualitative, not quantitative dis- 
tinctions. 

The first parable was minutely explained by Jesus, in order 
to supply the key to open others, and with a view to teach His 
disciples how to clothe His truths in like lively forms, and here 
in also to discern the inter-relations of Nature and grace in their 
identity of source, common dependence upon law, and simi- 
larity of operation. 

A cluster of parables are grouped in the Synoptists with the 
first, probably spoken at different times. The teaching through- 
out was one, the word (Mark iv. 33) developed under various 
aspects, according to the spiritual capabilities of the hearers. 
The leading idea of the whole was the Kingdom of God, its 
outward development, its inward development, its absolute 
worth, its finality, its authoritativeness. 

The underlying teaching of Nature was uncovered by Christ 
in the parables. His spiritual insight into Nature was exhibited 
that the inward and spiritual might always be detected in and 
under the outward and visible. " Verily Thou art a God that 
hidest Thyself," was the summary of prophetic interpretation of 
Nature under the Law. Verily Thou art a God that revealest 
Thyself is the Christian version. From the time of Jesus 
Nature has become a sacrament, whereof artist and poet and 
man of science have partaken in diverse ways and many parts, a 
sacrament of life unto life, or of death unto death. 

By a harmonious sequence of teaching in word and teaching 
in work, Jesus exhibited His power over the forces of Nature 
after He had unfolded the spiritual lights which lay hid within 
them. He is the Divine Man of Science imposing His laws 
superphysical, as He is the Divine Artist revealing beauties 
supersensible. But this miracle was not primarily a lesson, 
still less a dramatic display of power. It followed in the 
natural order of events. It was evoked by circumstances ; it 
fell in with the ordinary current of the Galilean trials of life. And 
it was singularly adapted to impress the hardy fishermen of the 
lake in the line of their own business and experience. It was 
one of the casts of the Fisher of men. They had seen a 
hundred times the majesty, the violence, the sudden impetuosity 
of the Galilean storms. They had long known the fickle 
temper of the winds which swept down the gorges of the hills, 
and left the lake half calm, half riot and confusion. They 



THE DIVINE NATURE-WOkKER. Ill 

may have lost dear lives in such storms, on such days 01 
nights when 

" One could not hear 
A word the other said, for wind and sea 
That raged and beat and thundered ; " * 

or waited and watched 

" The awfullest, the longest, lightest night 
That ever parents had to spend — a moon 
That shone like daylight on the breaking wave. 
Ah me ! and other men have lost their lads, . . . 
And seen the driftwood lie along the coast." 2 

And now they seem likely to lose their own, for one of those 
thunder gusts that hurtle across the lake and lash the calm 
surface into tossing sheets of foam 3 had burst in more than 
ordinary violence, as is shown by their terror, upon the filling 
vessel. And the Master slept tranquilly on the steerman's 
pillow as in His Father's arms. At their cry of alarm He 
awoke, and the 

" Wild winds hush'd" 

in a moment at His breath. It was a double-edged reproof. 
He smote the winds with a curt rebuke, as if behind the in- 
animate play of impersonal forces He beheld (as perhaps He 
did) the active personal control of a guilty spirit. And the 
disciples were chid for the faith which had not cast out fear. 

This victory over Nature was immediately succeeded by a 
very different one. The psychology of demonism is obscure. 
Modern lunacy furnishes points of contact, and apparent 
instances of it now and then. 4 But the two are not to be con- 
founded, as the ordinary lunatic may merely suffer from some 

1 Jean Ingelow, " Brothers, and a Sermon." 2 Ibid. 

3 Compare Captain Conder's graphic account of a storm, " Tent Life," 
ii. p. 340. 

4 The writer believes there is more connection between the two than is 
usually supposed, and is in possession of evidence indicating that both 
demoniac possession still exists, especially in uncivilized and unchristianed 
countries, and that cases of lunacy are sometimes partly, at least, spiritually 
conditioned, 





114 JESUS CHRIST. 

cerebral disease, while the demonized need have had none, and 
was conscious of possession by some foul spirit, sometimes 
losing his consciousness in that of his master fiend, sometimes 
violently asserting his own separate individuality. Again, the 
moral connection between demonism and evil was absolute, 
between lunacy and evil it is partial and relative and occasional. 

It must still have been evening when, after the short, stormy 
passage, the crew landed on the eastern shore. Two demoniacs, 
one of whom appears to have been the spokesman and leader, 
immediately (Mark v. 2) came to meet Him. Led by some 
unaccountable Divine instinct, some far-off vibration of mercy, 
they saw Him at a distance in the moonlight, and ran and 
worshipped Him. Unless the sacred narrative be tampered 
with in the interests of critical presuppositions, the demons 
recognized Jesus, addressed Him in a loud voice as the Son 
of the Most High God, and besought permission to enter the 
swine. And He said unto them, Go. The sharp bluff down 
which the panic-stricken herd rushed has been easily identified, 
and the caverns and sepulchral rock-chambers out of which 
the demonized came abound around. One of the two patients 
of Jesus clung doglike to his Saviour's presence, clothed, and 
sane, but he is ordered to leave it and to proclaim God's 
mercies to his own circle. The owners of the swine and all 
the city would rather be rid of Him. " Egypt was glad at their 
departing." The stone of stumbling proved an offence. 

The question of Christ's right to destroy, or, more accurately, 
to suffer the destruction of animal life and property, has been 
raised. But it is only a part of the larger question of the 
permission of all evil, moral and physical. In this case moral 
reasons appear on the surface. It was for the good of the 
possessed that he should have ocular evidence of the removal 
of his masters ; and the same applies with less force to the 
disciples. It was for the good of the owners who set so much 
store upon their swine, and probably in defiance of the law, 
for the population of Peraea was essentially Jewish, 1 that they 
should learn by punishment if they would not be taught by 
mercy. 

Jesus returned by sea. Crowds gathered round Him in the 
morning light. Pushing his way through (Luke viii. 41) with 
the persistency of an impassioned purpose, Jairus, one of the 
1 Schurer, i. 3, and reff. s, I. to Josephus and the Mishna. 



THE DIVINE MISSIONARY. II5 

synagogue rulers, lays his father's sorrows at the feet of Jesus. 
His healing powers were well known ; and His words of 
" comfort ye," and His pitifulness, and sweet compassionate- 
ness must have been recognized in the synagogue, and by the 
bedsides of the sick, most of all by the merciful and the 
sorrowful. On His way a woman with an issue of blood (Luke 
viii. 44) touched His tallith, and was healed of the twelve years' 
incurable malady and consequent Levitical uncleanness. Many 
of such restored invalids, comforted mourners, and healed sick, 
if only one in ten like the lepers were grateful, must have 
formed a nucleus round which the Messianic societies would 
increase. 

The house of Jairus was now reached. Tumult and wail and 
"the flutes for the dead" sound round the still form. So far 
from wishing to advertise His recall of the maiden to life, Jesus 
took apart with the parents only His select three. Peter and 
John and James were now for the first time taken into the 
innermost circle of His confidence. It was a spiritual differen- 
tiation of the three most like-minded to Himself, and most 
adapted to respond to the high gift and burden of His special 
call. " Talyetha Qum " ; two words recall the spirit to its 
forsaken tenement. She awoke from the death which our 
Lord, in common with Rabbinism, called sleep. Perhaps this, 
the second, to be followed by a third, return from the kingdom 
of the departed, prepared the way there for our Lord's myste- 
rious journey from the Cross to Hades, and the proclamation to 
disembodied spirits. Before His saving death, before the keys 
of Hades (Rev. i. 18) lay in His victorious hand, the spirits of 
the departed cannot have been as blessed as after. Since the 
parting of that soul and body, and the penitent robber's trans- 
lation into Paradise, a new beatitude has been uttered on them 
that sleep in Him, and on those who mourn for them. Christ 
passes from the busy streets of Capernaum. Perhaps He was 
becoming too famous there, and a continuous presence and 
work might have precipitated a Messianic movement, and one 
of the very kind He uniformly rejected. His Messianic policy 
was founded on a Divine, not a human, basis. Otherwise He 
might have created a storm of popular enthusiasm in any of 
the largest towns, and ridden upon the crest of it to the gates 
of the capital. There are, too, unseen links of spiritual causa- 
tion in all lives governed by conscious obedience to Divine 



Il6 JESUS CHRIST. 

vocation. Alike in its greater heights and deeps, as in its 
every-day entrance into commonplace duties, the life of the 
Divine Being in the flesh is, and must be, a mystery which the 
highest raptures of faith in its loftiest adoration must approach 
a great way off. He returns to Nazareth (Mark vi. i). His 
own city has a second opportunity offered. The same objection 
is made. The narrow vulgarity of local self-sufficiency cannot 
understand His "generation." How could He rise above the 
level of His "parents " and family ? It was a social breach of 
the laws of Nature. Their unbelief imposed limits upon Christ's 
power, and He wondered. But the dilemma before them and 
modern unbelief is the same. His human environment being 
what it was, how could He rise so infinitely above not His 
source only, but above His highest contemporaries in the whole 
world, in thought, and in life, unless He was "before them"? 
(John i. 15.) What laws of heredity, of environment, of evolu- 
tion can account for Him? If His origin was not natural, then 
no account is possible, but that for which His own word is 
pledged. Either the Nazarenes were right, and are the creditors 
of the human race, for their superior insight, or He whom they 
cast out. " We can understand nothing of the works of God, 
if we do not take it as a principle that He blinds some while 
He illuminates others." l Into the conditions of such blindness 
we need not now inquire. But so much we may be permitted 
to observe. That the Nazarenes had, if exceptional difficulty 
on social ground, exceptional privilege. They had witnessed 
for years the lovely growth of the tender plant ; they, in all the 
world. 

A general missionary tour followed in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood. And now as the spiritual harvest lay thick, He 
called to Him His reapers. Not till the time was come, not 
till the workers had received some preliminary training, did He 
send them forth. He sent them two by two (Mark vi. 7 f. ; 
Matt. x. 5 f. ; Luke ix. 1 f.) as His missionaries now ought to 
be, and are more often sent, possibly to regions as yet un- 
visited by Him. The mission was not final, but temporary ; 
not catholic, but limited to the house of Israel. Their function 
was to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal, to cast out 
demons, and to raise the dead. They were royal messengers 

1 Pascal, Thoughts, xviii. 



THE DIVINE MISSIONARY. 117 

and emissaries accredited with delegated royal authority. They 
were to go unprepared, unprovided. A Jewish colouring per- 
vades the whole charge of their Master. The words in St. 
Matthew's account go beyond the immediate prospect, and 
gather up the fragmentary missionary directions of different 
occasions. This is quite in accordance with the classifying 
method of the sacred writer. The spirit of all His missionary 
operations is identical, though the form and manner may differ 
widely. 

The sacred narrative abruptly turns at this point to the heroic 
spirit who lay forgotten in the rocky dungeon at Machaerus 
(Mark vi. 21 ; Matt. xiv. 6). Spring had come, and with it the 
approach of Passover. The anniversary of the death of Herod 
the Great, and of the accession of Antipas to his Tetrarchy has 
arrived. There is a sound of revelry. Salome, daughter of 
the adulterous Queen Herodias, descendant of the Asmonaean 
heroes, granddaughter of a king, dances, like a Nautch girl, 
before the tetrarch and his lords and courtiers. And the head 
of the noblest of the pre-Christian white-robed army of martyrs 
falls as the guerdon of a dancing-girl. But 

" Be sure they sleep not whom God needs I" 1 

The tidings of this event must have moved Jesus deeply. 
The forerunner had been faithful unto death, and had gone 
before to the end which awaited his Lord in a greater darkness 
of foreseen horror. And His immediate plan was adapted to 
the change. Yielding to the current of events, to escape the 
danger in which the murder of the Baptist involved Himself and 
His disciples, and the uprising of popular indignation, Christ 
retreated across the Sea of Tiberias, outside the jurisdiction of 
Antipas, to Bethsaida-Julias. 

When St. John's voice had been silenced in the prison 
fortress, and his outward and visible work broken off, the cry 
of the kingdom was again taken up by Christ, and rung 
through Galilee. The prophet's work had died only to rise 
again to a new life of higher and wider fulfilment, and his 
message to be repeated in louder tones with more peremptory 
authority. There are no gaps in the continuity of the kingdom, 
no breaks in the order of Divine development. 

1 R. Browning, "Paracelsus." 



Il8 JESUS CHRIST. 

" O power to do ! O baffled will ! 

O prayer and action ! ye are one 
Who may not strive, may yet fulfil 

The harder task of standing still, 
And good but wished with God is done." 1 

The news of St. John's death must have spread rapidly 
among the people, and may have been one element in the 
motives which brought a vast concourse after Jesus, and sug- 
gested the popular rising to make Him king. The miraculous 
feeding of the five thousand men, without counting women and 
children, is alone of all the miracles related in full by all four 
evangelists. Its importance lay in its symbolical meaning. It 
was an act of Divine compassion, in the first place. They who 
had hungered after righteousness, and sought first the kingdom 
of God, did not even lose their daily bread. But the discourse 
in the s) nagogue at Capernaum interprets the sacramental 
prophecy of the miracle. Jesus began both to do and teach. 
This is His way. First the work, then the doctrinal content. 
The discourse and the miracle interpret one another. Christ 
would be the Bread of Life ; His apostles and successive 
ministers would distribute the Bread to His people. His very 
words and action, the blessing, the breaking, look onward to 
the Last Supper, as the Last Supper preludes the Marriage 
Supper of the Lamb. The Passover, too, was nigh, and most 
of the guests at the table in the wilderness were on their way 
to partake of the Paschal Lamb in Jerusalem. And was there 
not also the further thought indicated that all " daily bread " 
should savour, as in St. Augustine's rendering of the Divine 
prayer, of the " supersubstantial Bread," and all common food 
recall Divine, and every Christian table be a table of the Lord ? 

It was upon the green grass at the north-east corner of the 
lake, near the eastern Bethsaida, perhaps now Et Tell, or 
Bethsaida-Julias, upon the present fertile plain of Batihah, that 
the multitudes sat down in order. St. Mark, from the graphic 
stroke of St. Peter, has pictured the scene in a word. Their 
many-coloured order, their regular arrangement, suggested rows 
of " garden-beds," bordered by the verdure of the spring grass. 

Turning from spiritual to historical sequence, the tumul- 
tuous Messianic enthusiasm which broke out after the miracle 

1 J. G. Whittier, " The Waiting." 



THE DIVINE MISSIONARY. 119 

of feeding forced Jesus to decide between heading the excitable 
multitude on a royal march to the capital or instantly leaving 
them. The disciples had been fired by the explosion of popular 
feeling, and two Gospels significantly report that they were 
compelled by Jesus to embark while He dismissed the multi- 
tude. Here, then, the third temptation had recurred, and His 
own friends were an instrument in it. Had He been a mere 
social reformer or Nationalist, He would have mounted on the 
wave of an overpowering popular impulse to the highest place 
of authority. Not so ; He fled to the mountain, to be alone 
with God, wrapt in the storm, but with a soul bright with the 
consciousness of duty done and temptation overcome, as lake 
and shore and windy height with the effulgence of the Paschal 
moon. Yet in their hour of need unforgetful He walks across 
the waves to the tossing boat and labouring crew. Perhaps 
this was rather a work of psychical sympathy than of power. 



" Star to star vibrates light : may soul to soul 
Strike thro' a finer element of her own ? " l 



Sympathy annihilates distance, and reads the thoughts of the 
farthest away. They were in actual jeopardy, in fear ; perhaps 
further disheartened at His repulse of an offer which, made by 
so vast a Galilean multitude, if not national in act, was national 
in promise. Their faith must be strengthened, their hope con- 
firmed, their love not left comfortless. And so, quite naturally, 
and without effort, He stepped across the moon-lit surge and 
brought them to the haven where they would be. 

The western Bethsaida, or " Fisherton," must have been 
very near Capernaum, and was probably its fishing suburb. 2 
Christ had purposed landing ; but the storm-drift had borne 
them northward, and they made shore at the beautiful "land of 
Gennesaret," now the marshy plain of El Ghuweir, along the 
north-western shore. The discourse in the synagogue on the 
Bread of Life, must have been delivered on the Sabbath, or 
Saturday ; consequently it was early on Friday morning when 
the Lord landed, and the miraculous meal, like its antitype, 
took place on Thursday evening. During Friday took place the 

1 Tennyson, " Aylmer's Field." 

■ Comparing Mark vi. 45 and John vi. 17 and Mark i. 29 with John i. 
44 • xii. 21. 



120 JESUS CHRIST. 

concourse of out-patients, as if to a living hospital. These 
must have been happy hours of healing. They were not 
undisturbed. The evil spirit of opposition rises up in the 
person of a deputation of Pharisees and Scribes from Jeru- 
salem. Why at this particular crisis is not clear, nor is it 
material. The question between them was fundamental. 
Underlying the particular point of complaint, eating with 
unwashen hands, lay the whole principle at stake, which 
Western thought would have formulated in exact terms : First, 
what was the relative importance of Scripture and tradition ? 
Second, what was the authority of Christ in comparison with 
both? Third, what was the spiritual worth and position re- 
spectively of the opposite parties ? A definite solution of these 
questions was essential. A point of detail involved the whole 
principles. Any mode of reconciliation between the contending 
forces of thought was more of a moral than an intellectual 
impossibility, because the difference was really spiritual, a 
difference of character — the final difference of Christ and 
anti-Christ in all their embodiments of thought and life. 

With regard to the first question, Christ appeared to 
Rabbinism to be taking up a revolutionary position, whereas 
He really returned to the original and primary prototypal 
revelation. To this day Christianity is faithful to the first- 
hand law. The Jews are the representatives of hereditary 
degenerate Rabbinism. Christ restored the true type. Phari- 
saism was committed to the degenerate forms. The law of 
custom (the Halachah) was " quite as binding as the written 
Thorah (law) ; " x nay, as the former was the " authentic exposi- 
tion and completion of the latter," a breach of it was a more 
serious transgression. W T hile the Law was supreme and final 
in name, in practice it was superseded and made void. The 
conscience could not breathe. Religion was adulterated at its 
source. Christ came to substitute a natural for an artificial 
conscience, to harmonize nature and grace, or rather to trans- 
form nature into grace, mechanical slavery into free-hearted, 
intelligent obedience ; in short, to substitute the spirit of 
sonship for the spirit of servitude. The Pharisaic party were 
too heavily laden with their own fetters to appreciate the sweet 
air of freedom ; nor could they confess ignorance and sin, and 

1 Schiirer, i. 334 and reff. 



THE DIVINE MISSIONARY. 121 

humble themselves to the seat of the poor in spirit. Pride was 
their sin of sins. 

With regard to externalism then and thereafter, Christ came 
to set it upon its right basis. Here again He came not to 
destroy, but to fulfil ; to combine together internal and external 
truth, as soul and body are united. Spirit and matter coexisting 
in Him could and should coexist in happy accord, the latter 
subject to the former, as the body to the soul. 

" Inward evermore 
To outward, — so in life, and so in art, 
Which still is life." 1 

The whole incidental question of ceremonial is here deter- 
mined. Ceremonies are indifferent in themselves. To eat with 
unwashen hands denies not a man. Their moral and spiritual 
valuation entirely depends upon the spiritual thought they em- 
body, the spiritual life they reveal. Christ Himself used cere- 
mony when He broke bread and blessed it, and likewise the 
cup. Ceremony was an end in itself in the Judaism of Christ's 
days, and is still in Brahminism and many forms of non- 
Christian religions and superstitions, from fetishism upwards. 
By Christ ceremony was not put out of court, but humbled to a 
means and instrument. 

Two of the dark shadows of the Passion were already falling 
upon Christ in these victorious hours. One was the contradiction 
of sinners ; the other was the falling away of His own friends. 
As the Pharisees openly thwarted Him, so the doctrinal dis- 
course upon the Bread of Life was the signal for disaffection 
and desertion. "Will ye also go away?" was the appeal of 
human and Divine disappointment to the first, so to speak, of a 
long series of refusals to His holy table. 

The discourse was spoken, partly at least, "in synagogue." 
The Palestine explorers have discovered eleven synagogues, 
and Mr. Oliphant another since, at El Dikkeh. The architec- 
ture of these is much alike. It is a florid and debased Roman 
type. The Capernaum synagogue, being built of white lime- 
stone blocks, must have formed a conspicuous contrast to the 
black basalt all round. The pot of manna found engraven on 
a bkx:k may have pointed Christ's very words. Verse yj an d 

1 E. B. Browning, " Aurora Leigh." 



122 JESUS CHRIST. 

following appear to have been spoken in further explanation to 
the inner circle of the disciples. 

The chilling blasts of controversy which had beaten upon 
them must have deepened our Lord's purpose of seeking a 
restful shelter for the weary, disappointed spirits. The two 
miracles, accompanied by the Messianic storms of favour and 
disfavour, had been an exciting episode, and our Lord and His 
disciples would be glad of a quiet Passover. He retired to the 
borders of Tyre and Sidon without leaving the land of Israel 
proper (Matt. xv. 21 ; Mark vii. 24), and must have kept the feast 
" in some friendly Jewish home." 1 Here the intercessory faith 
of the Syro- Phoenician woman was rewarded, after being 
purified by instruction and whetted by delay, by the dispos- 
session of her daughter. The act was one of the incidental 
mercies of special Providence, and may have roused the droop- 
ing spirits of the disciples. It was another preparatory hint 
that Samarian schismatic, Roman or Greek proselyte, and 
even outer heathen, were to find a place in His household and 
at His table. It was another indication that the fence of law 
and privilege and ceremony and tradition was being broken 
down, that all nations would seek and find the Universal 
Healer. They were so slow in apprehending the Messianic 
kingdom that they may have put down to the overflow of 
gracious sympathy what was a scientific law of the kingdom. 
That kingdom was to be universal, not natural ; cosmic, not 
terrene ; eternal, not temporal. Entrance into it, and alle- 
giance to it, demanded spiritual, not natural, affinities. For 
some such purpose He may have taken the circuitous route of 
the district of Sidon 2 as His return journey. Another excursion 
into heathendom follows. Decapolis becomes the scene of 
missionary activity and of many works of healing. The feed- 
ing of the four thousand takes place. Hagaret-en-Nusara, or 
" Stones of the Christians," one of the points of the Toran 
range, is the supposed site. 

1 Edersheim, ii. 44. 

2 Mark vii. 31. "Through Sidon," R.V., Tischendorf, Westcott and 
Hort, &c. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE DIVINE TRANSFIGURATION. 

" Upon a sudden One there entered there 
Whose countenance with marvellous beauty shone, 

More than the sons of men divinely fair, 
And all whose presence did the likeness wear 
Of angel more than men." 

Archbishop Trench, " Gertrude of Saxony." 

On the way to Caesarea Philippi — The Petrine confession — The Rock — 
The Divine sign — The excellent glory — The descent — The return— The 
predictions. 

"The retreats of Jesus were not merely journeys of flight ; they 
were epochs of reflection," x and, we may add, of revelation, of 
progressive teaching. The storm of opposition, the ebb ot 
desertion, had not shaken Christ's spirit nor abated His pur- 
pose. Caesarea Philippi, Hermon, were spiritual stages on the 
road to Jerusalem. Having dismissed the multitudes (Matt. xv. 
39), Christ came to the region of Magadan and Dalmanutha 
(Mark viii. 10), which are unidentified, unless the latter be 
Tarichaea, 2 Kerak, and encountered the Pharisees and Saddu- 
cees. They demanded a sign from heaven, perhaps in allusion 
to the manna feeding. Leaving the issue to be fought out upon 
another arena, He journeyed on beyond the borders of Israel, 
past the " lower springs " of Jordan, through a well-wooded, 
park-like country, rich in varied beauty, forward to Caesarea 
Philippi, twenty-five or thirty miles north of the Sea of Galilee. 

1 Keim, iv. 256. 

2 Or Dalmanutha may be the present ruin of Ed Delemiyeh, one mile 
north of Jarmuk(Dr. Thomson), and Magadan, Megidon (Ewald). 



124 JESUS CHRIST. 

It was another devotional epoch rather than a missionary tour. 
It was a time of spiritual retreat. The sign refused to unbelief 
and hardness of heart was to be given to the faithful. The 
rapture of conscious Divine communion was to forearm Jesus, 
as if with a second baptismal unction, for the last and worst 
agonies of labour and suffering, and those who would be with 
Him in His temptations and drink of His cup. 

On the way thither (Mark viii. 27) Christ drew from Peter, 
the spokesman, the great confession, " Thou art the Christ, 
the Son of the living God." The rocky base of the great castle 
frowning ahead may have supplied the material colouring, or 
pointed the meaning, of the responsive promise of the Messiah, 
" Upon this rock I will build My Church " (Matt. xvi. 18). 

As Moses had hailed God in his triumphant Nunc Dimittis 
again and again as the Rock — 

" The Rock, His work is perfect, — 
Then he forsook God which made him, 
And lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation ; — 
Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, 
And hast forgotten God that gave thee birth " — 

(Deut. xxxii. 4, 15, 18) 

and so on (verses 30, 31, 37), and Hannah in her Magnificat — 

" Neither is there any rock like our God " (x Sam. ii. 2) — 

so did Christ identify Himself with the Rock of Moses and 
Israel's salvation. Upon His Messianic Divine Nature, i.e., 
upon Himself, would His Church be built (Heb. xii. 28), "a 
kingdom that cannot be shaken " as He afterwards told them 
in the words of the Messianic Psalm. He was the chief corner- 
stone of the real, true Temple (Psa, cxviii. 22). That His 
hearers understood Him in this sense then and thereafter is 
manifest from the use made by St. Peter himself of the word 
and its underlying thought, conceiving Him " as a living, life- 
giving stone, and a stone of stumbling," and a rock of offence ; 
and the Fathers who have regarded the Petrine faith as the rock 
may be followed if we regard the same subjectively. Faith in 
Christ is the inward heart foundation upon which the whole 
life-confession of the Church and the Christian reposes. This 
is, then, one of the many places where Christ peremptorily 



THE DIVINE TRANSFIGURATION. 125 

required immediate and prospective faith in Himself as a 
spiritual necessity ; and upon this occasion, in surroundings 
specially heathen, where the temples of Greek, Roman, and 
Syrian deities uprose like outlying fortresses of error marked 
out for destruction. 

Far from Zion, the city of God, far from the potentates and 
lords and teachers of Israel, did Messiah receive His due 
homage. Here another latent prophecy of the incoming of 
the Gentiles and the Epiphany of the sign from heaven to 
those whom the stars of righteousness, godly fear, and peniten- 
tial desire were, and are, leading to the Light. 

And now they had come to Caesarea, or its immediate proxi- 
mity. At the south-west foot of Hermon were the sources of 
the Jordan, where the grotto was dedicated to Pan, and the 
place and surrounding country named after him, Paneas or 
Panias. Close by, Herod built a splendid temple to Augustus ; 
Philip rebuilt the place and changed its name to Caesarea. The 
place has retained its earlier name, and is now called Banias, 
and is famed in travellers' descriptions for its beauty and its 
seclusion. 

The rest here, or in the neighbouring villages, attempered 
their minds for quiet thought undisturbed by controversial 
heats. Peter's adoring confession of faith and the immediate 
reward of promise was the preface to the deepening solemnity 
of the Messiah's forewarnings of His suffering and rejection. 
These were no instinctive vaticinations, nor the political forecast 
of a leader who felt his cause was lost. They are the ex- 
plicit and detailed intimation of 'His Passion, His Death, and 
His Resurrection. The prophecy calls out the surprised rebuke 
of the leading apostle, whom perhaps the promise of the keys 
had exalted, and who was now humbled. Till the Petrine con- 
fession had been made, Jesus had spared them some of the 
revelation of the Cross. Not till the truth of His Nature was 
deeply lodged in their faith did He task it with so unwelcome, 
so novel, and uncontemporaneous a revelation as that of the 
suffering Messiah. Doubtless they took the truth to heart. 
But we cannot live in our highest moments, and from this level 
they fell away in life, as the temporary desertion at the Passion 
shows, and partly in faith. Nor did they rise to it again till 
the light and power of the Resurrection transformed their con- 
ceptions of His Office, and work, with its own glory, and the 



126 JESUS CHRIST. 

majesty stood out before them in the kingly splendour of its 
proportions, till with the Spirit He passed into them, the hope 
of glory, the faith of their faith, the life of their life. 

Mountain heights have from time been chosen as the scene 
of supereminent Divine manifestations. The cliffs of Sinai 
heard and echoed the Ten Words which were the crown of the 
older Covenant. Upon Hattin the new Law was delivered by 
the Prophet of the New Covenant. Upon one of the elevations 
of the snowy height of triple Hermon Christ was transfigured. 
From a mount He ascended. The solitude of the lofty moun- 
tain, the stillness of the night, or possibly the early dawn, 
befitted this more than 

" Bridal of the earth and sky," 

when the Shechinah came down and the Voice was heard out 
of the cloud. It was the supreme moment of spiritual elevation 
in the life of Jesus. It was a prelude of the Ascension. Jesus 
was never nearer Heaven, nor farther above earth, alike in 
body and in spirit than upon this night. Hermon shares in 
Scripture with the mount of the first Divine Epiphany the title 
which one of the eye-witnesses of the excellent glory applied to 
it — "the holy mountain" (Ezek. xxviii. 14 ; 2 St. Peter i. 18). 

Jesus took with Him the three chosen disciples. They who 
witnessed and shared the prayer of the Garden of Agony, 
witnessed and shared the prayer of the Mountain of Glory. 
The immediate purpose of this evening journey was, St. Luke 
alone characteristically informs us, prayer. The snowy dome 
of Hermon is the most conspicuous object of the landscape 
from almost any point of the country. And now it rises before 
them — 

" A kingly spirit throned among the hills," 1 

as they leave Caesarea Philippi and climb its steep heights and 
ridges. How long the silent prayer of Jesus had lasted we 
know not. The heights and depths of that incense offering 
upon that midnight mountain altar pass human thought. Even 
devotion gives place to weariness. It is a very true touch of 
nature and physical infirmity that the disciples exhibit. The 
time, the fatigue of the climb, the drowsy effects of the snow, 
1 Coleridge, to Mount Blanc, changing "Thou" to "A.'' 



THE DIVINE TRANSFIGURATION. 127 

and the keen mountain air, tell upon their senses, and they are 
heavy with sleep. When they have become wide awake they 
perceive that a change had come over the Lord. He was 
transfigured before them. His face shone as the sun, His 
garments were white as the light, such as no fuller on earth 
could whiten them. And within the circle of glory were two 
human forms, recognized by their words or signs as the great 
Lawgiver and the first great Prophet. Law and Prophecy in 
their persons rendered homage to the fulfiller of both, whose 
words should not pass away. Moses and Elias had broken, as 
it were, away from Sheol upon the wings of this "light unspeak- 
able and full of glory," to speak with Jesus of His Exodus which 
He should accomplish at Jerusalem. The communion of saints 
was for the time visible. The word exodus carried with it all 
the types and predictions of Israel's history of conflict and 
deliverance and victory, and pointed the way to their definite 
fulfilment at Jerusalem in the second Moses, and to the promised 
city of glory beyond, which was the inheritance of the spiritual 
Israel, whose glory they already beheld in foretaste. 

While they were still looking in wonder the three disciples 
were parted asunder from Jesus. " The extreme rapidity of the 
formation of cloud on the summit " of Hermon has been noticed. 
In a few minutes a thick cap forms over the top of the mountain, 
and as quickly disperses and entirely disappears. Such may 
have formed the material basis of the cloud of light which over- 
shadowed them. As St. Peter, the spokesman, in confusion 
and fear suggested that they should make three tabernacles, or 
arbours, from the boughs of the trees, for it was good to be 
there, in this heavenly society and effulgence, they entered into 
the cloud. The simplicity and materiality, so to speak, of the 
plain Peter are marks of the truth. The writer of a myth or 
fairy-tale legend would never have invented so prosaic a state- 
ment. They were afraid. The climax of glory was reached, 
the same Voice which had attested the Divinity of the Messiah 
at His Baptism, commanded them to hear Him, as the 
authentic Prophet of God, because He was the Beloved Son of 
God. 

To Jesus the recognition of His Father's voice must have 
been a repetition of the transcendant joy of the baptismal 
greeting. Must we not say that for the moment all else was 
forgotten, or in that absorbed, that — 



128 JESUS CHRIST. 

" He heard not, saw not, felt not aught beside, 

Through the wide worlds of pleasure and of pain, 
Save the full flowing and the ample tide 
Of that celestial strain " ? z 

Must it not have been for His sake as well as for the disciples? 
The irresistible outflow of Divine approval and attestation, the 
surpassing benediction of the Father upon the Son of His love? 
There is no mention, as in the Baptism, of the Third Person of 
the Holy Trinity. But the presence of Moses and Elias sug- 
gests far-off, unknowable relations to, and vibrations of joy to, 
the pre-Messianic children of light. 

The Divine Voice, the burden of joy and glory, were too 
tremendous for human nature. The three witnesses fell on their 
faces with terror. It was necessary for Jesus to come near 
and touch them, as the Angel of the Covenant touched Daniel, 
and set him upright, before they could look up (cf. Jer. i. 9 ; 
Ezek. i. 3, ii. 2). And when they had lifted up their eyes the 
glory had passed away like a pageant, and they saw no man 
but Jesus only. 

The veracity of the account stands or falls with that of the rest 
of the Gospels. Its spiritual fitness at the time, and importance 
in the drama of the Christ life, are better understood the more 
they are studied in the after-light of the Passion, Resurrection, 
and Ascension. The Transfiguration looks before and after. 
Before to the glory of the Only-Begotten of the Father, before 
to the triumphant confession of Simon Bar Jonah crowned with 
unsought proof (Matt. xvi. 17) ; after to the resumption of the 
same glory with the Father, after to the communion in glory of 
all the sons of God. 

In indirect support of the gospel veracity and in general 
remark two observations may be made. First, that of all un- 
Jewish incidents in the life of Jesus this is the most un-Jewish ; 
of all words or deeds unexpected of, out of correspondence with, 
and indeed impossible to a Messiah of contemporary Jewish 
conception, this was up to this time the most remarkable. The 
kingliest Messiah of the highest Jewish conception would never 
have made this expedition to Cassarea, and the promises uttered 
upon the occasion. The revelation of glory upon the mountain 
none but a Divine Messiah could have made. Yet, secondly, 

1 Abp. Trench, " The Monk and the Bird." 



THE DIVINE TRANSFIGURATION. 120. 

that revelation bears on the face of it, in the light of its before 
and after, its own explanation. The Transfiguration must be 
viewed in strict connection with the preceding confession. 
They are chronologically two scenes in one act, but spiritually 
undivided. It was the Divine answer to the divinely-inspired 
avowal of the disciples, and the authentication of Jesus' claim 
to be Messiah by the Divine sign, withheld from unbelief. Eye 
hath seen, and ear hath heard, not all, but some of the things 
which God hath prepared for them that love Him. The king- 
dom of God was see^ in power by three of those who had 
heard the King speak of His departing to Jerusalem, His 
Cross, and His Passion. The very words were, so to speak, 
overheard by, or the teaching knowable to, the pre-Messianic 
saints, and formed the subject of their talk with the transfigured 
Messiah. The continuity of God's plan of redemption is 
illustrated as it moves on from stage to stage in the gradual, 
timed, localized evolution of His Divine eternal purpose. 

The glory had passed away. Jesus and the three descended 
from the mount of God to the valley of tears, from spiritual 
rapture and exaltation to the broken cries and discords of tune- 
less, half-articulate humanity. 

The first incident jarred. Even the nine apostles were of a 
faithless generation (Luke ix. 41), and could not cast the demon 
out of the lunatic child. The crowd which had gathered round 
the famous Prophet must have been deeply impressed at the 
Lord's work of power and sympathy. In the grateful father, 
the healed son, and the sympathetic crowd, undisturbed by 
Rabbinical cross-fires, we discern the germ of an outlying 
mission church, to the very early existence of which the after- 
legend of Jesus' statue points. 

Without any record of the intervening journey we find Him 
again in Galilee. Very solemnly He again warns the disciples 
(Luke ix. 44, 45, and Synoptists) of the approaching Passion 
and Resurrection, to which now He was consciously approach- 
ing, and for which He was deliberately preparing them. How 
much they needed preparations of heart and head after-events 
disclose. 

At Capernaum was made of St. Peter the demand for the pay- 
ment of the national Temple-contribution, with which the 
public sacrifices were bought (Exod. xxx. 13 f. ; 2 Chron. xxiv. 
6). This consisted of two Attic drachmas, i.e., one common 



I30 JESUS CHRIST. 

shekel, or Sanctuary half-skekel. The stater in the fish yielded 
up by a Providential coincidence, paid in full for St. Peter and 
for Christ. Jesus pointed out, too, that He paid it, not as an 
obligation, but as a concession to misunderstanding. The 
Prince was free of the king's taxes. The payment should not 
therefore come out of the common fund, but from an extra- 
ordinary source. 

Lessons on the spirit of the new kingdom follow according to 
natural suggestions of circumstances. The lesson of humility 
and simplicity of heart like that of the child set in their midst. 
The lesson of largeness of heart, which sinks itself in the 
advance of the kingdom so far as to overlook an imperfect 
sanction and authority when devils are cast out and good works 
are done in Christ's Name outside the Apostolate. The lesson 
of mortification, or sacrifice of any line of thought, word, or 
deed which imperilled the spiritual life and threatened the ruin 
of the whole nature in Gehenna fire. The lesson of brotherly 
forgiveness, which forgets as well as forgives ; the true altruism, 
or spirit of brotherliness, which does not efface "reasonable 
self-love," x but extends it to the other self. Each of these 
lessons was complete in itself, and part of a whole. 

1 Bishop Butler, "Sermons." 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE ASCENSION JOURNEY. THE DIVINE MISSIONARY IN 
PER^EA. 

" I was glad when they said unto me, 
Let us go unto the house of the Lord." 

A Song of Ascents ; of David (Psa. cxxii. i). 

"And every thought and word, 
And all things seen, 
And every passion which his heart has stirred, 

And every joy and sorrow which has been, 
And every step of life his feet have trod, 
Lead by broad stairs of glory up to God." 

Lewis Morris, "The Food of Song." 

The days of going up — Peremptory claims — The Feast of Tabernacles — 
The adulteress — The Light of the World — The Shepherd of Israel — 
Pastor pastorum—Pevdean Mission — The seventy missionaries — The 
Good Samaritan — The devout home scene — The prayer of prayers — 
Feraean work resumed — The Feast of Dedication — Return to Peraea — 
Incarnate energy — Missionary parables — Parables of the Unseen 
World. 

A pregnant phrase of St. Luke's shows that a new chapter 
(Luke ix. 51), and that the last, of Jesus' life now opens. The 
rest of His life constituted the days of His receiving up. 
From the height of that crowning event, the writer looks back 
upon the different incidents as so many stages linked in spiritual 
order and sequence. The unity of the purpose is the key to 
the whole. The Christ who said and did and suffered what the 
following record reports is now in glory. To that Ascension 
glory He was moving. The Ascended Lord is the thought 
which fills the mind of St. Luke even while he relates His 



132 JESUS CHRIST. 

earthly ministry ; so he spoke of His exodus, not of His death. 
So St. John's picture of the earthly life is dominated by his 
conception of the Eternal Word manifesting Himself humanly 
in the world and then returning to His glory. 

If, as seems likely from the Mishna, the Temple tax was due 
about the Passover, the date of the journeys to and from 
Hermon is approximately fixed, and followed immediately upon 
the events before narrated. An interval of silence occurs in 
the fourfold history. From the Passover of John vi. to the 
Feast of Tabernacles of John vii. 2, i.e., from Nisan 15 to 
Tishri 15, was a period of half a year. The months that 
followed the return to Galilee after the Transfiguration are 
passed over in a single connecting verse (John vii. 1). To go 
up to the Feast of Tabernacles with the pilgrim company which 
His "brethren" joined Jesus refused (John vii. 9). They did 
not, as yet, believe in Him. Their Messianic conceptions were 
of the purely Jewish order. They could not be in sympathy 
with Him; their paths must lie apart. After they had gone 
Jesus began His "Ascension" journey privately (Luke ix. 51) 
with His disciples, and by a different route. For instead of 
going through Peraea to avoid schismatic Samaria, His first 
intention was to go direct by way of Samaria. The first 
incident on the journey showed that the seed sown in Samaria 
had not ripened sufficiently, or spread widely enough, to dispel 
Samaritan hatred ; nor had the sons of thunder who wanted to 
bring fire down from heaven r learnt yet to apply the lesson of 
forgiveness. Further on a scribe, unique in his calling, said 
he would follow the Master. He Himself bade another. A 
third offered Himself. All three meet with searching half- 
repellent answers. From the last two Christ claims a peremp- 
tory obedience overleaping the dearest natural ties, such as 
only the Divine Being and the Divine cause could justify. It 
was an application of the precept, " Seek ye first the kingdom 
of God." His own homelessness, outward, as the first was 
reminded, inward, as His own spirit knew, was His own more 
than fulfilment in example. 

Whether the mission of the Seventy took place before or 

after the Feast of Tabernacles is much disputed. We put it 

ater. The Feast of Tabernacles, the Harvest Festival of the 

Jewish Church, was the most popular and important festival 

1 Even as Elijah did — om. R. V., Teschendorf, Hort, Gebhardt. 



THE ASCENSION JOURNEY. 1 33 

after the Captivity. It was observed in the month Tishri. It 
began on the fifteenth day, five days after the Day of Atonement, 
and lasted eight days. At Jerusalem it was a gala time. It was 
to the autumn pilgrims, who arrived on the fourteenth, like en- 
trance into a sylvan city. Roofs and courtyards, streets and 
squares, roads and gardens, were green with boughs of citron 
and myrtle, palm and willow. The booths recalled the pil- 
grimage through the wilderness. The ingathering of fruits 
prophesied of the spiritual harvest already beginning. 

As Jesus did not arrive in Jerusalem till the middle of the 
Feast of Tabernacles, He cannot have been there for the Day 
of Atonement. St. John (vii. 11) especially intent upon the 
conflict of faith of which He was the centre describes the 
questioning and murmuring among the different knots of Jews, 
Jerusalemite or Galilean. Feeling was divided, but those who 
were well disposed towards Him knew too well the mind of the 
hierarchy to express openly their sentiments. While men 
speculated and questioned, Jesus came up Himself in the 
middle of the feast, and resumed His teaching in the Temple. 
The oft-repeated question " How," takes another form. How 
knoweth this man letters, having never learned in any recog- 
nized school of thought ? The answer is a plain, unevasive 
appeal to first principles. His teaching was derivative, not 
humanly, but divinely, and assigned the highest place in ap- 
praising spiritual evidence to the will honestly bent upon doing 
God's will. His doctrine was kncwable to doer, not dreamer. 
Up to this point the argument is universal in scope, and ap- 
peals broadly to mankind. It is spiritual, superhistorical. It 
then takes a Jewish turn — an argwnentiwi ad hominejn — an 
appeal to Moses. Which showed the true Mosaic spirit, those 
who broke the Law they professed, those who sought to kill, or 
He who wrought a greater work of healing and mercy than the 
circumcision which was permissible on the Sabbath day ? The 
dilemma was a personal one. It was the alternative of the 
Messianic, or the anti-Messianic party, the invariable, the final 
alternative set before the Jews. 

The bold stand made by Christ was the next object of re- 
mark (vii. 25). There was no shade of concession on His part, 
no pretension to a compromise with the dominant party. The 
scabbard had been thrown away. An ineffectual order for His 
arrest followed. 



134 JESUS CHRIST. 

The last, or great day, of the feast came, the seventh, '* the 
great Hosannah" (John vii. 37). When the voice of Jesus rang 
loudly through the Temple, " If any man thirst let him come 
and drink." This must have been after the symbolic pouring, 
at the Altar of Burnt Offering, of the water solemnly brought 
from Siloam, with its thanksgiving choral song, the great 
Hallel (Psa. cxiii.-cxviii.). It was the Divine answer to the 
supplication of the ingathered thousands of far-scattered Israel, 
" with palms in their hands." Another ferment breaks out. 
The crowds are convulsed with a rush of conflicting movements 
of thought and feeling. Is, or is not, this the Christ ? The fal- 
tering Nicodemus was a type of those who would give Him 
fair play, but were slow in forming their convictions, and timid 
in acting upon them. Many believed in Him (John vii. 31 and 
viii. 31), and were at various stations on the road towards the 
light, others waxed in unbelief and hostility. The line ot 
division became more marked. Several futile attempts were 
made to seize Him. The Temple officers themselves confessed 
to the hierarchial party, " Never man spake like this Man." 

The episode of the woman taken in adultery is no part of St. 
John's original gospel (John vii. 53). All internal and external 
evidence is against it. The moral evidence is admittedly for 
it. It is just one of those anecdotes which would be remem- 
bered and handed down. That some incident took place of 
the kind may well be supposed. But the time of it is quite 
uncertain, and the details appear to be un-Jewish and inaccurate. 
It may have crept into the fourth Gospel from a lost work of 
Papias of Hierapolis, who collected various discourses of our 
Lord, with comments, gathering them from the reports of 
primitive disciples. 

Probably on the next day, or Octave, Jesus spake in the 
Treasury, within the Court of the Women. Another of the 
festal rites supplied Him with a text. The nightly illumination 
of that court symbolized Him who was the Light of the world. 
The light was a Messianic title, and would have been Mes- 
sianically understood, as in the vesper hymn of the aged Simeon. 
Both this and the following discourse, reported in a summary 
by St. John, travel along, yet infinitely above and beyond, 
Jewish modes of thought and argument, but utter eternal truth. 
His own claim was self-evidential of Divine. That truth could 
only be appropriated spiritually. Truth carried with it freedom. 



THE ASCENSION JOURNEY. 135 

The children of Abraham were those who shared his faith. Abra- 
ham himself had spiritual sympathy with Him. Christ here 
strikes out the great doctrine developed by St. Paul. They must 
be taught of God. Christ's words became more and more deci- 
sive, and the dilemma before His adversaries increasingly pe- 
remptory. He ended with the assertion of His eternal existence 
(John viii, 58). Before Abraham was, I am. It was brought 
out by the stress of controversy, like all great truths. It set the 
issue straight before all. They answered with stones. But He 
was not to die like St. Stephen, and hid Himself and withdrew. 

If, as seems likely, 1 St. John's narrative is here strictly con- 
tinous, the healing of the blind man took place on the next 
day (ix. 1). The connection of doing and teaching, 2 as ever, 
and the correlation of thought between moral and physical 
blindness and enlightening, necessitate the inference as to 
chronological connection. And the Sabbath sheltered Him 
from renewed violence. The miracle took place probably at 
the entrance 3 to the Temple. Again St. John, as so often, 4 
fixes our attention on the mental and spiritual forces at work. 
Again he dwells minutely on the history of an individual. It is 
the inward scenery of the moral life as every soul passed across 
the penetrating Light, and revealed itself to which he is sensi- 
tive. His intense moral realism is the secret of the vividness of 
the dialogue. The whole scene is not a triumph of artistic 
imagination, but the vivid expression of what he saw and 
remembered, outward and inward. The eye- and ear- witness 
records, whose eye and ear have been opened. Were not this 
the explanation, St. John must be placed at the head of all 
dramatic artists. Christ was the Master light of all his seeing ; 
in that Light he saw the light, the Light Himself and that on 
which He shone, and, by shining upon, made transparent. 
But upon the enemies of the Light the darkness was now sinking. 

St. John's tenth chapter contains our Lord's address to the 
shepherds of Israel, 5 and the flock which had become a prey to 
them. There is nothing arbitrary in the choice of the figure of 
the shepherd. He identifies Himself with God the Shepherd 

1 Reading 8k in John x. 22 with R.V., Gebhardt, Tischendorf, &c, n 
tote be read with Westcott and Hort, then Dr. Westcott's inference may be 
correct, that John ix. i-x. 21 all belong to the Feast of Dedication. 

2 Cf. Acts i. 1. 3 Cf. Ibid. hi. 2. * Cf. vii. 43 ; viii. 30 ; x. 19, &c- 
5 Cf. all Ezek. xxxiv. 



136 JESUS CHRIST. 

of Israel in the past ; ■ and promises the universal extension of 
His one flock. So with the flock He identifies Himself else- 
where as the Lamb of God. He knows the Shepherd will die 
for the sheep ; but His death is a voluntary self-surrender, and 
He will take His life back again. Such teaching must have 
prepared the apostles for their own work of shepherding. 
Again, the continuity of God's purpose reveals itself. He had 
been, and is, the One True Shepherd all along, the Pastor 
fiastortim. His under-shepherds, His flock, belong to Him 
only, and by their character and work set forth the pastoral 
aspect of God's character, revealed fully in Christ. Under the 
figures of Shepherd and Lamb, combining both lines of thought, 
we have the full expression of the doctrine of Christ's media- 
tion. And the figure of the Shepherd would remind the more 
cultivated of Enoch's pre-Messianic vision of God as the " Lord 
of the sheep," calling seventy shepherds and committing to them 
the punishment of the sheep. The recognition of other sheep 
not of the Jewish fold was a very un-Jewish statement. Such an 
implied prophecy revealed His pastoral love and yearning 
sympathy over the unshepherded flocks of universal humanity, 
for whom He laid down His shepherd life. And the prophecy 
speaks of His personal bringing them, and the becoming, how 
slowly, how gradually, He knows, one flock under One Shep- 
herd. Such words must have been one of the inspirations of 
the first apostolic missionaries, as they have been of the latest. 
" He loved all men alike, and he never despised any one," were 
the words of the Melanesian boy over the body of Bishop Pat- 
teson, lying with its five wounds before him. So after the 
death of the Rev. Philip S. Smith, of the Oxford Mission to 
Calcutta, at a meeting held a few days after that event had 
brought mourning to many non-Christians, Mr. Protap Chunder 
Mozoomdar, a leader in the Brahmo Samaj since the death of 
Keshub Chunder Sen, spoke of him as follows : " Truly did 
the Rev. Philip Smith imitate the glorious Ideal by whose name 
he was known, by living in this country a life deep and pro- 
found. What shall we say of his life ? It was so gentle, so 
good that his features have painted themselves upon our mental 
vision for all time. Manhood and womanhood, tenderness and 
strength, blended in his sweet character. I, thinking of him, 

1 Psa. lxxx. 1, xxiii. 1 ; Ezek. xxxvii. 24 ; Zech. x. 3. 



THE DIVINE MISSIONARY IN PER^A. 137 

am reminded of some mediaeval saint, overflowing with kindness 
to bird, and beast, and man." x 

Such overflowing love to peoples of strange heart and tongue 
and colour has been the uniform characteristic of those who have 
carried on the Messianic tradition of love beyond the bounds of 
national creeds and the home centres of the faith. 

Love was the inspiring motive of the Incarnation, of the 
Atonement. Love is the central fire of the sacrificial energies 
of the Christ-bearers. The passion to spread the kingdom of 
love is the master passion in the hierarchy of noble ambitions. 
The love of the Chief Shepherd propagates and repeats itself 
in thousands of hearts, and wings flights upon flights of prayer. 

" The world is used to have its business done 
On other grounds, find great effects produced 
For power's sake, fame's sake, motives in men's mouth. 
Truth is the strong thing. Let man's life be true ! 
And love's the truth of mine." 2 

The view taken of St. Luke ix. 51 negatives the opinion of 
some that Christ now returned to Galilee. Of Galilee He had 
taken farewell. Nor is it likely that He can have remained 
tranquilly working in Judaea after so determined a declaration 
of hostility. And the woe upon Chorazin and Bethsaida loses 
its point away from their neighbourhood. We agree then with 
those who place his Peraean ministry here lasting with the break 
of the Feast of the Dedication about six months. Some place 
the mission of the Seventy 3 on the journey to the Feast of 
Tabernacles. But there seems more time for it now, and as a 
missionary campaign of ingathering it fitly follows on that 
festival. We are wholly without geographical details in St. 
Luke's account. His bias is towards missionary history and 
spiritual expansion. The personal colouring shows itself here. 
For the writer was an evangelist and a fellow-worker with St. 
Paul. Just those details of Christ's discourse or work which 
he had laid under contribution in his own labours would natu- 
rally collect in his memory, or in his notes and manuscripts. 
This will account for the universality, the humanity of his 

1 Oxford Mission to Calcutta Report, June, 1888 ; compare Sir W. 
Hunter in The Nineteenth Cenhiry, July, 1888, in reference to " the young 
Oxford ascetic. "' 

2 R. Browning, " In a Balcony." 3 With Tischendorf, &c. 



138 JESUS CHRIST. 

Gospel, for its Pauline character, its especial attention to the 
home and foreign missions of Christ. His is the Gospel of 
the Good Samaritan, of the Prodigal Son. 

The mission of the Seventy was a new departure, both in the 
constructive organization and in the outward expansion of the 
kingdom. They were sent in pairs. This society and fellow- 
ship provided for spiritual sympathy and co-operation, for 
practical efficiency, and also formed a knot of so-to-speak 
churches, where two were gathered together into a nidus or 
centre, and the whole co-ordinated under the Supreme Mission- 
ary. The occasion was temporary. The underlying principles 
were permanent, and are specially suggestive of the importance 
of sending out missionaries, two by two, or in brotherhoods and 
societies. The concise practical directions given to the evan- 
gelists show that the Christ, as Administrator, did not despise 
attending to minor details of order and method. Economy of 
time, of equipment, and healing of the sick were especially 
insisted on. 

The number seventy was not a statistical accident. It was 
a sacred number, and bore the dignity of honourable and his- 
toric precedents. Moses had organized seventy elders. The 
Sanhedrin, when instituted or reorganized; numbered seventy. 
The number seven again and again recurs in the cycle of 
Jewish religious observances. 

The Mission was successful. The Seventy returned with joy, 
and reported that even the demons were subject to them in His 
Name. Jesus had identified Himself with His workers in the 
impressive words, " He that heareth you heareth Me, and he 
that rejecteth you rejecteth Me," implying thereby their plenary 
authority and representative commission. Now after the 
declaration of Satan's fall from heaven, as if He beheld behind 
the visible scene the prehistoric downfall of the Evil Spirit 
repeating itself in spiritual dethronements, He renews, and 
confirms, and extends their delegated authority over all the 
power of the enemy. And more than the disciples their 
Master in that same hour rejoiced (according to the right, 
newly recovered, and most remarkable reading, Luke x. 21, 
R. V.) "in the Holy Spirit." Were not such hours when He 
saw of the travail of His soul and was satisfied but few? 

At this time the question of the lawyer elicited the parable of 
the Good Samaritan. Some episode in the lawyer's own life, 



THE DIVINE MISSIONARY IN PERjEA. 1 39 

or some well-known incident of the day, may have formed the 
basis of the story. It was entirely un-Jewish ; just as now it 
would be un-Mahommedan, for a Mahommedan Sunni would 
leave a Mahommedan Persian Shi'ah to perish unheeded on the 
roadside. 1 It taught the spirit of brotherhood of which He 
gave so many examples. Perhaps some of the Seventy were 
Samaritans. The parable is, as it were, the foundation-stone 
of all Christian hospitals, and the equalization in treatment of 
all sects and faiths within the walls where Christian doctors 
and nurses often exemplify the power of His faith and 
fraternity. 

The visit to the home of Mary and Martha at Bethany may 
have been just before, or just after the feast. Its interest lies 
in its revelation of the Lord in the retirement of home life, and 
in His intercourse with women. The anecdote of Mary and 
Martha is inserted by St. Luke for some purpose other than 
biographical. Mary and Martha are representatives of two 
orders of human character. 2 One was absorbed, preoccupied, 
distracted ; the other was concentrated and single-hearted. 
Her own world was the all of Martha ; Christ was the first 
thought with Mary. They did not necessarily represent the 
laborious and the contemplative types of life. The former was 
divided ; the latter, one. To Martha life was " a succession of 
particular businesses "; to Mary life "was rather the flow of one 
spirit." 3 Martha was Petrine, Mary was Johannine. St. Luke 
gives us a moral as well as a domestic interior. The one was 
a well-meaning, bustling busybody ; the other was a reverent 
disciple, a wistful listener. 4 Did not the first miss the Divinity 
of the guest, and the other go far towards recognition and 
worship? As a rare glimpse of family life in the Gospels, and 
Christ's presence in the home we gladly dwell upon it. We 
shall hardly do wrong to notice a certain touch of humour in 
the Lord's reproof of the " distracted " mistress of the house- 
hold. St. Paul had such a picture in his mind when he spoke 
of attending upon the Lord "without distraction" (1 Cor. vii. 38). 

1 Sir F. Goldsmid gives an example in his own experience at a '1 urkish 
caravansera near Baghdad, " On Islam," Mission Field, May, 1888. 

2 Cf. J. Martineau, " Hours of Thought," p. 59. 3 Ibid. 

4 Cf. " Pirke Aboth." 4 ; Taylor, " Let thy house be a meeting-house for 
the wise ; and powder thyself in the dust of their feet ; and drink their 
words with thirstiness." 



140 JESUS CHRIST. 

By the law of association of ideas it is likely that the prayer 
of the disciples (Luke xi. i) to be taught to pray, took place in 
some spot where John, like any other Rabbi, had taught his 
disciples a form of prayer, or where our Lord Himself had been 
seen, or heard, offering the calves of the lips. It is well 
known that the Lord's prayer was based upon pre-existent 
Jewish prayers. But there was transformation as well as con- 
servation. In the first place, no orthodox Israelite could have 
sincerely prayed " Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them 
that trespass against us," any more than an orthodox modern 
Mahommedan. In the second place, Christ laid down no rules 
as to posture and ceremony. The prayer was internal — without 
implying or excusing irreverence. The Rabbinical prayers 
were too often external. " This appears from the Talmudic 
tractate specially devoted to that subject (Berakhoth), where 
the exact position, the degree of inclination, and other triviali- 
ties, never referred to by Christ, are dwelt upon at length as of 
primary importance." * The universality of its content, " Our 
Father," was also as un-Rabbinical as un-Mahommedan, and 
another indication of the fraternity and interdependence of the 
members of the kingdom one with another. The clause, " Thy 
kingdom come," may have been a devotional creation of the 
Baptist, and adopted by Jesus. u Thy will be done on earth as 
it is in heaven," could only have been born of a mind con- 
versant with heaven and earth. " Give us this day our daily 
bread," was a practical confession of faith in the minute pro- 
vidential superintendence of the bodily needs of those who 
sought first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. 
" Deliver us from the Evil One," a had special point in times 
and seasons of conscious warfare with the ubiquitous works of 
the devil, and in relation to thanksgivings such as " I beheld 
Satan as lightning fall from heaven," and prayers such as that of 
the Great Intercession. The personality of the Evil One comes 
into very distinct view in the New Testament. He had been a 
figure in the background under the Old Covenant revelations. 
But when the intense light of the gospel was shed with 
increasing power on things unseen and seen, the figure, the 
character, the work of Satan emerged more and more clearly. 

* Edersheim, i. 536. 

3 For this rendering see the Bishop of Durham's (to the writer's mind) 

conclusive essay. 



THE DIVINE MISSIONARY IN PER^EA. 141 

The work of Christ as a personal antagonism, past, present, 
future, and as a chronic victory over a personal enemy, can only 
be fully understood by reading it in the light of His own 
prayer, His own words, and in those of the men whom He 
taught. He knew He was contending not with the vis inertia of 
evil, with mechanical masses of death and corruption, but with 
a superhuman personal will and intellect at the head and front 
of others like him, many as those who fell from heaven like 
stars. 

The Peraean ministry was not rich in noticeable incident. 
Christ's teaching was public and open. The masses flocked to 
Him. The words of the prophet Jeremiah (xv. 10), " Woe is me, 
my mother, that thou hast born me a man of strife and a man of 
contention to the whole earth," describe the tone and spirit 
which pervade His teaching in the face of Pharisaic opposi- 
tion. The necessities of spiritual polemics drove Him into 
open denunciation of those whose spiritual disestablishment 
was necessary in the interests of their own souls, and of 
those who looked up to them. Even at the friendly meal, out of 
season as well as in season, the Pharisaic host must be taught 
to unlearn his externalism, if he would be a child of the pro- 
phets and not of their murderers. 

A prophetic outlook underlies His teaching to the disciples. 
With regard to the nation his call to repentance becomes more 
and more accentuated ; with regard to the disciples, more and 
more illuminative. The burden of coming events seems to 
weigh every word. The night was coming when no man could 
work. 

Our Lord's warnings became increasingly severe. His 
invective breathes the thunder of the prophets, and predicts the 
wrath of the Lamb. Mighty works and deeds, of which the 
former are selected rather than the latter by St. Luke, lose 
evidential force for, and judiciously harden, hearts encrusted 
with guilt and blackened with hatred. The climax of warning 
sin the against Holy Ghost (Luke xii. 10), in the face of myriads of 
was reached in the declaration of the unpardonableness of the 
the multitude, so closely packed that they trod on one another 
(Luke xii. 1), and emphasized by the preceding tenderness of the 
context which spake of the unforgotten sparrows, and the hairs 
of the head all numbered. 

This Peraean ministry was interrupted by the Feast of 



142 JESUS CHRIST. 

Dedication (John x. 22). Christ was not afraid to face His 
enemies again in the heart of a hostile territory. The 
feast was not one of Divine, but of national institution. After 
the desecration of the Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, Judas 
Maccabseus had dedicated the altar " with songs, and 
citherns, and harps, and cymbals" (1 Mace. iv. 54). The spirit 
of patriotism, the wish to render honour to national feeling and 
civil authority, animated the Ideal Son of Abraham. Both as 
Messiah Prince demanding the allegiance of Israel, as Son of 
God always and everywhere declaring His Father's glory, and 
as Child of Israel, He would discharge the duty of an Israelite 
indeed, and show His fellowship with His people. Under the 
last aspect we have the consecration of patriotism. Upon the 
altar of the Divine heart that flame burned brightly. Christ 
accepted His place in the organism of the State, and discharged 
His civil obligations with the fullest recognition of the Divinity 
of their claims. When Judas "decked the forefront of the 
Temple with crowns of gold and with shields " (1 Mace. iv. 57), 
he was champion alike of Church and State, and in both 
characters a vicegerent of God. 

Not till the Temple of Christ's Body had been restored and 
reconsecrated by the Resurrection, after the desecrating violence 
and profane destruction at the hands of the wicked, did the 
figurative prophecy of the Maccabean restoration come to 
a fulfilment. The festival probably took place at the Christian 
Christmastide, but the twenty-fifth of Chislev that year, 
according to some, fell earlier in December. The wintry 
season is especially noted by St. John, and accounts for Christ's 
walking under the shelter of Solomon's Porch. 

The teaching contained no new elements, but re-emphasized 
and reiterated old truths. The consistency of Christ's claim 
through evil report, and through good report, with opposition 
or without it, the steadiness of His front, and the calm decided 
insistence of assured conviction, must have deepened the 
favourable impression of honest inquirers wavering towards the 
light. Here was One who never quailed, who never abated, 
who never lost dignity nor temper, whose looks and mien 
towards high or low breathed tenderness, sincerity, holy 
force, whom no one could detect in any weakness, compromise, 
or concession, whose words of grace and truth seconded 
works of power and love. Character is a potent force, often 



THE DIVINE MISSIONARY IN PERiEA. 1 43 

when and where least acknowledged, or openly decried. The 
character of Christ must have made itself felt with increasing 
clearness, and farther range of influence, as He became more and 
more a public Man and the great question of the day, in Temple 
Court, in crowded street, in upper chamber gatherings, and in 
the private musings and heart-searcbings which come to all but 
the careless and profane. 

The great point in His statement He presses again and again 
— His works. It is still the evidence of the Christian life which 
tells most among non-Christians, or half-believers. 

Again He employs the familiar figure of His sheep, but makes 
a magnificent addition, which implies that the turning point had 
come to some of them, and the great decision made — " I give 
unto them eternal life,'' not I will give. The gift is theirs for a 
present possession, the free, unbought guerdon of the saving 
Giver. 

His unequivocal statement of unity of nature with the Father 
was understood, and rightly understood, in the only sense it 
could bear. It was a more categorical statement of what had 
been implied and indeed asserted before. Again the threaten- 
ing stones were taken up, Again they sought to arrest Him, 
and He escaped from their hands. 

The change to Peraea was as sudden as it was welcome. In 
the capital the more He loves the less He is loved. In Peraea 
He again reaps where the Baptist had sown. In Jerusalem 
the tide of hatred is rising to the flood. In Peraea " many believed 
on Him " (John x. 42). Wherever He is His presence cannot 
be "put by." His character, and the work which is the neces- 
sary outflow of it into His social environment, is strong to repel 
or to attract. Neutrality was impossible. The question of the 
day, in public debate, in private self-examination, was approach- 
ing solution. Every other question, national and political, social 
and sectional, religious and spiritual, general and individual, 
turned upon this. Eyes and ears were opening to this fact 
everywhere in Jewry. We constantly meet evidence of our 
Lord's physical activity. Here in Peraea (Luke xiii. 22), as 
formerly in Galilee, a round of cities and villages is visited. 
Everywhere the new teaching is heard, and the same results 
took place on small fields which the scanty records and the 
incidental hints of the Gospel memoirs depict in the larger 
centres of population. 



144 JESUS CHRIST. 

We feel again in the presence of incarnate earnestness and 
energy. The drain upon the Lord's physical and spiritual re- 
sources at this time must have been unceasing. Religious work 
is especially exacting. The flow of feeling, the pressure of re- 
sponsibility, the excitement of aggressive labour, which His 
workers knew, and know, and which we see so luminously 
reflected in the pages of the Pauline Epistles in every phase of 
high emotion, and breathed in the thousand diverse harmonies 
of the Psalter, must have been as real, and as exhausting, in the 
perfect Missionary and Christian Worker, at least as in any of 
His followers, or in many put together. 

But to balance the pressure of over-work there was the per- 
fect trust in God, the casting of all care upon Him, the rest 
under the shadow of His hand. When He bade His "little 
flock" "fear not," or " be of good cheer," or "be not over- 
anxious," He spoke straight from the heart of His own experi- 
ence. He revealed therein indirectly the inner springs of His 
own spiritual strength and peace, and the outward demeanour 
of the Blessed of all His own beatitudes must of itself have 
been an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace 
and light. 

The parables of the Peraean ministry are transcripts from the 
Divine experience. They all illustrate the seeking and saving 
love (Luke xv.), the redemptive forces of God, seen actually and 
visibly in Christ's own life, secondarily and derivatively in the 
lives of those He taught and inspired. They harmonize in place 
and time with the specially missionary character of this Peraean 
episode. These discourses may be viewed under three aspects 
— as they bore upon the apostles, upon the general body of the 
disciples and hearers, and upon the Church of God. Under 
all aspects they pourtray the eternal character of God, as the 
deepening light of ages has shed the lustre of progressive reve- 
lation upon it from glory to glory. 

In reference to the apostles the parables had an educational 
value. Christ was gradually transforming the false Messianic 
ideal of their minds into the true. He was educating their con- 
sciences at the same time to a higher level and an acuter vision. 
Their whole mental horizon had to be universalized. The para- 
bles paved the way for the teaching of St. Stephen as that 
contained in germ the full flower of the Pauline Gospel. The 
Messianic message to all nations, and the sacredness of the 



THE DIVINE MISSIONARY IN PER^EA. 145 

individual in God's right, the absolute annihilation of preroga- 
tive and privilege in the election of grace, the freedom of sal- 
vation, and over all the yearning heart of God willing all men 
to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth — 
these are the truths which flowed naturally from these doings 
and sayings, and sunk imperceptibly with fructifying power 
into the hearts of the disciples. And they were lit up at every 
point by a host of unrecorded words, looks, acts, which even the 
Catholic Gospel of St. Luke has left for future resurrection and 
the historians of other worlds. 

So to the general body of followers, hearers, inquirers, un- 
organized as yet, and unshepherded, this Perasan ministry must 
have opened a new world. All men need Christ, but not all 
seek Him. Of those who seek Him many seek blindly or un- 
consciously. The history of modern missions supplies examples 
of what went on on a grander scale where Christ and His 
apostles laboured. Much, most, of the work had to be left for 
future labourers. But an impression must have been left, a 
mark greater and deeper than the Baptist's made in the same 
region, which broke ground for the coming harvests. 

With regard to the Church of the ages, it is needless to dwell 
upon the force and meaning. Every missionary effort has drawn 
upon the stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son, as 
a fund of inspiration and energy. 

" Out in the desert He heard its cry — 
Sick and helpless, and ready to die." 

A pair of parables follow in St. Luke's sixteenth chapter, which 
would not be placed there except for chronological or spiritual 
fitness. As the preceding triad threw open the gates of the 
Messianic kingdom, so these close them. Even the spiritually 
dead might revive, the lost might be found, but there were limits 
imposed by character, in this department of the kingdom, and 
in that province which lay beyond the grave. The moral of 
the parable of the unjust steward was that all property — 
intellectual, spiritual, material — is a trust to be used in the 
interest of the kingdom to come. The " other-worldliness " 
with which George Eliot taxes Christianity might be a true 
charge if there were no moral connection between the kingdom 
that now is visible and that now is invisible. On the contrary, 

11 



146 JESUS CHRIST. 

Christ emphasizes the absoluteness of that connection. Use 
this world aright, because it is the school for another. Here lay 
His heaviest charge against Pharisaism. All the things in the 
world, even religion, the most sacred of all, ministered to their 
selfishness and personal exaltation. They claimed the praise 
of men here, and the praise of God hereafter. They would step 
grandly from their popular thrones below to loftier pedestals 
above. They sat in the seats of learning and knowledge, religious 
honour, wealth, and social esteem ; and every one of these trusts 
was perverted and abused to their own glory and self-righteous- 
ness. 

The second parable changes the scene with terrible irony to 
the next world. The conditions of Dives and Lazarus are ex- 
changed, but the characters of each are unchanged. Dives still 
justifies himself, and under the cover of a plea for his own 
brothers, impugns the righteousness of God in not giving him- 
self and them a fair chance. Dives still regards Lazarus as an 
inferior being, who should be summoned at his beck. Dives 
still views his environment from the centre of himself and his 
family. It is a shallow exegesis which here discovers moral im- 
provement in the rich man. 

" Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currant.'" 

Character becomes eternal, independent of space and time. 

The personal point of the parable cannot be missed. The 
Pharisees and Sadducees were warned and exposed. They were 
the rich men, who fared sumptuously in the palaces of religion, 
knowledge, and material luxury, and left the " accursed " rabble, 
Am-ha-aretz, to starve. The drama ends in the prophecy that 
the resurrection would fail to elicit the moral obedience of those 
who were deaf to Moses and the prophets. The last words 
establish and re-affirm the moral continuity and unity of the law 
and character of God, under its three successive stages of the 
Law, the Gospel, and the kingdom of the Unseen. God is always 
true to Himself. According as men were true to Him or untrue, 
they fell on either side. The Messianic advent was a pre- 
liminary judgment and division, reversing the false ideals of the 
day, and affirming the true. The death of Christ was the cli- 

Hor. 



THE DIVINE MISSIONARY IN PER^EA. 147 

max which both sides were approaching. Viewed as to their 
need of salvation and moral culpability, mankind as a mass were 
arrayed in hostility to Him, and in varying degrees were guilty 
of that death. Viewed as confessing or disowning their guilt, 
as accepting or rejecting a Saviour, mankind fell into two classes 
before the dividing presence of Christ. In the long run man 
must admit his own sinfulness, or impute it to God. So the 
Pharisees established their own righteousness, and imputed to 
Christ unrighteousness. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

GATHERING SHADOWS. 

" ' Mere reason ' cannot be tolerated in religion, even as it cannot in the 
sanctities of home. For religion is truly the home-feeling of the universe. 
The Church is the home. Here comes feeble, weary, jaded humanity, to 
seek its rest" (Jas. Hinton, " Philosophy and Religion," p. 187). 

The resurrection of Lazarus — Back to Pereea — Divorce and marriage — 
The rights of woman — The rights of children — Behold, we go up to 
Jerusalem ! — Jericho — Zacchseus and the service of man — The blind 
healed — The pilgrims in debate — The Sabbath rest and unction. 

The Peraean ministry was now broken by an appeal which could 
not be set aside. Tidings of Lazarus' dangerous illness reached 
Christ from some trusted messenger of his sisters. " He whom 
thou lovest is sick." The message was short and anxious, as a 
sick bulletin and a virtual prayer. The Lord's answer is a key 
to the whole of His conduct. Had this sickness — and death — 
not been for the glory of God we can hardly have believed that 
Christ would have placed the dearest claims of private friend- 
ship above the "bitter cry" of Peraean Messianic need. But 
there is no real clash of duties. Duty is one. The record of 
St. John has all the fulness and picturesque minuteness of the 
memory of the eye-witness. The objections of the disciples to 
His returning to Judaea and certain death by stoning were the 
common-sense objections of the natural man. Our Lord's appeal 
to the preordained limits of His working-day removes the 
ground of duty to the region of that faith which reads off the 
invisible. The human, the Divine, move with perfect harmony 
in the mysterious music of the unity of the Divine Person who 



GATHERING SHADOWS. 1 49 

is of both. Human affection and sympathy prelude the out- 
burst of Divine power. The silent tear, the loud cry. The 
word of Christ was a discharge of spiritual force, a supernatural 
vibration to the unknown regions of the spiritual cosmos. It 
was the inner current of volition, rather than the loud wave 
of sound, which was heard by the disembodied spirit. The 
latter was spoken for the witnesses, or possibly as the discharge 
of deep feeling, like that of the one grateful leper. Might not 
unbelief urge, has it not urged that here was imposture ? or 
credit to the evangelist the creation of " a masterpiece of alle- 
gorical fiction"? The answer depends upon the presupposi- 
tions. This miracle directly declares Christ's independence of 
the laws of nature and of human nature more emphatically 
than any preceding one. It was the prelude to the Royal 
Resurrection. It was a great sign of the greatest sign of all at 
hand. 

Its credibility externally rests upon that of the Fourth Evan- 
gelist. Its internal credibility is swallowed up in the larger 
proposition of Christ's own resurrection. The effect of the 
resurrection of Lazarus was decisive upon many of the eye- 
witnesses (John xi. 45). Many of the Jews, i.e., as usually in 
St. John, the anti-Christian Jewish party, believed on Him. 
But " some," contrasted with "many" must mean a minority, 
carried their report to the Pharisees. This miracle more 
than any other up to the greater one it prefaced, is not only 
a help to certify Christ's revelation, and itself a means by 
which in part it is made, " but also a pledge of our final restora- 
tion and victory over sin and disease and death." x 

Such a majestic sign of power was decisive. Lazarus was a 
living witness who could not be gainsaid before friend or foe. 
In the heart of Jewry, in the streets of Jerusalem, in the courts 
of the Temple, could henceforth be seen and heard a man who 
had returned to this corruptible life in the flesh at the bidding of 
Him who declared Himself the Messiah. Either His Messianic 
challenge must be accepted, or He must be finally silenced. At 
this juncture a council was held to consider. There was no 
hesitation among the Sanhedrists, no change of mind. Their 
hearts were too hardened to listen to evidence. The one ques- 
tion was not, is He after all the Messiah ? but, what can we do ? 
The one danger, their personal ruin before the rising tide of 
1 Stantcn, p. 17. 



150 JESUS CHRIST. 

popular belief, and in the near distance the annihilation of 
Temple, and city, and nation, of Church and State, by the 
Roman power. It is one of the Divine ironies of history that 
the fate they would avert by the sacrifice of principle to policy 
was that which befell them. The Romans took away their name 
and nation, and destroyed the Temple which they falsely accused 
the Lord of wishing to destroy. The wailing-place of the Jews 
in modern Jerusalem, viewed in its past spiritual and historic 
relations, and from Christian Jewish sympathies, is indeed the 
saddest nook in this vale of tears. 

Tidings of the decision of the council reached Jesus. He re- 
tired to the obscure Ephraim, probably Ophrah, of Benjamin, 
afterwards Epherema, a village thirteen miles north of Jerusalem, 
now Taiyibeh. Here He stayed with His disciples. Such a rest 
may have been needful to them and to Him. 

From Ophrah He could get by Roman roads to one of the 
Jordan bridges, and must have gone, for once more He is in 
half-heathen Peraea, at a safer distance, and goes as far as Galilee 
(Matt. xix. 1), perhaps to some rendezvous where He might join 
Galilean pilgrims to the Passover. From the frontier of Galilee 
(Luke xvii. 11) He passed between Galilee and Samaria, 1 perhaps 
because rejected at En-gannim (Jenin),the northern frontier town 
of Samaria, into Peraea. His previous missionary work had left a 
deep and wide impression. Great multitudes again came round 
Him, and He healed and taught them (Mark x. 1). Again we 
may compare His Peraean to the foreign mission, His Judsean and 
Galilean to the home work of the Church. 

The union here, as usual, perhaps always, of the ministry of 
healing with the ministry of teaching suggests the importance 
of combining medical 2 with directly spiritual work in the mis- 
sionary operations of the Church. Modern missions lack the ex- 
traordinary gifts of healing. If apostolic faith and unity of heart 
be restored to Christendom, why should not this missing weapon 
return to the armoury of Christian aggression ? Without it, at 
least the best resources of medical science should contribute to 
the holy wariare of heathen evangelization. Some of the most 

1 Sia fisffov as Hort, Tischendorf, Gebhardt ; ''between " margin R. V. 

2 Cf. especially the decisive utterances, exemplified by their own experi- 
ences, of the Bishop of Rangoon, J. M. Strachan, M.D., and the late Bishop 
of Sarawak ; and that of medical missionaries of the Church Missionary 
Society and Scottish Medical Missions. 



GATHERING SHADOWS. 151 

satisfactory results of evangelization have followed in the wake of 
missionary philanthropy, ministering, in the true spirit of love, 
to the wants of diseased limbs and famishing bodies. The 
annals of such missions as those of Nazareth, Tinnevelly, and of 
the ingatherings after the waifs and strays of the Indian famine 
had tasted the kindness of those who gave bread to the hungry? 
furnish cogent evidence. The lives of such men, as Dr. Hender- 
son and Dr. Lockhart in China, Dr. Elmslie in Kashmir, show 
how deep an impression may be made, and how the gospel way 
may be prepared by medical skill moved, hallowed, blessed by 
prayer, and followed up by teaching. 

The first noteworthy incident was the healing of the ten lepers. 1 
The watchful opposition of the Pharisees lay in wait for Him at 
every place. The nearer He drew to Jerusalem the hotter was 
the fire of criticism. Opposition to the truth does truth great 
service. Attack calls forth defence. Criticism enforces explana- 
tion, arrests attention. " These men are full of new wine," said 
the negative critics at Pentecost. An answer to the charge vin- 
dicated the truth and published it abroad. Frequently the 
Pharisaic attacks supplied Jesus with a text and an opportunity 
for declaring the kingdom of God. Such questions as that may 
have sometimes been the expression of honest difficulty and 
single-hearted inquiry (Luke xvii. 20). But that stage was long 
past with the Pharisees — 

*' Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye, 
And all my soul, and all my every part : 
And for this sin there is no remedy, 

It is so grounded inward in my heart.'' 2 

Any questions put by them were the explosion of bitter animus, 
and of the desire to involve Jesus either with the Roman govern- 
ment, or with the masses, or with both. 

The question of divorce was cunningly raised about the same 
time by a Pharisaic deputation. Whatever answer our Lord re- 
turned He would come into conflict with Rabbinical practice and 
popular belief. It was the deepest of all questions pertaining to 
family life, As Prince of Israel, as the Divine head of society, 

1 On leprosy, past and present, see an article by Agnes Lambert in The 
Nineteenth Century, August, 1884. 

2 Shakespeare, Sonnet 62. 



152 JESUS CHRIST. 

as the reformer both of the individual and of human society, 
He resolved a question which touched many human interests- 
To this current of controversial inquiry we owe Christ's re- 
affirmation of the primitive Divine law of the unity effected 
by holy matrimony, and of its indissolubility. The Mosaic 
permission of legal 1 divorce was, He said, a provisional con- 
cession to their hardness of heart. No teaching could have 
been more against the grain of contemporary practice. The 
school of Shammai counselled divorce only on the ground of un- 
chastity, " a matter of shame" (Deut. xxiv. i). The school of 
Hillel interpreted the latter clause in any and every sense. " A 
man," said Hillel, " may put away his wife if she prepares a 
dish badly ; if she makes a blunder ; if she lets the meat burn." 
Rabbi Akibah allows it if he sees a fairer woman. But in any 
case divorce " was obtained with an ease and frequency quite 
revolting." 2 

That some of the nobler minds took a higher view in principle 
and in practice is proved by clear evidence, as by the saying of 
Rabbi Eliezer, " Whosoever divorces his first wife, even the 
(very) altar sheds tears over him, for it is said" (Mai. ii. 13, 14), 
&c, &c. 3 But whatever may have been exceptional practice on 
the whole "the Jewish Law unquestionably allowed divorce on 
almost any ground." 4 In no respect was Jesus more above and 
beyond and contrary to His time than in the matter of marriage. 
In no respect less conceivably the creature and the exponent of 
His age and environment. To this positive and negative ele- 
vation of marriage to a level worthy of symbolizing in His 
apostle's language, " Christi et ecclesias sacramentum," s the 
Lord added a sanction to celibacy, and a virtual blessing upon 
it undertaken for the kingdom of God's sake by those to whom 
it is given. Buddhism, on the other hand, regards celibacy as 
all but essential to the attainment of Nirvana, and invariably 
discourages the married life. 6 

Christ's teaching on marriage was very different to that of 
the Rabbis. It stands still farther apart from that of the sanc- 

1 The Talmudic letter of divorcement may be seen in Stapfer, p. 154, E. T. 
a Stapfer, p. 153. 

3 Hershon, p. 239 p., and Stapfer, p. 153 q. ; " Gittin, '' 10 b, " San- 
hed.'' 22 a. 

4 Edersheim, ii. 333 ; Stapfer, s. L 5 Mediaeval marriage service. 
6 Cf. Kellogg, p. 313 following. 



GATHERING SHADOWS. 153 

tioned polygamies of Mahommedanism. It breathes a wholly 
different air. The whole conception of marriage was more than 
restored to its original ideal. It was transformed and heigh- 
tened and consecrated. 

The general position of woman towards man, both in the 
particular matrimonial relation, and in all the social and domes- 
tic relations, was raised in conception infinitely, and gradually 
has risen in practice as Christian ideas have taken effect. 
Christ's own demeanour towards woman, His birth of the holy 
virgin, His honour and compassion to the outcast and the in- 
fluential alike, were repaid by the abundant devotion of daughters 
of Israel. His conduct and bearing were the first movement 
towards their emancipation. His attitude towards divorce, a 
question in which woman has always been the greater sufferer, 
was in itself an incalculable advance of their rights. 

He was never sick. He never needed those gentle ministries 
of mercy where women all the world over are angels of compas- 
sion and skill. But His wounded Body was reverently handled 
at the rocky sepulchre by those whom His love and respect had 
won. 

But His Incarnation was the honour of honours paid to 
womanhood. Women henceforward were all implicated in 
the sacred dignity of her 

" Who born of Eve, high mercy won, 
To bear and nurse the Eternal Son, 
O awful station to no Seraph given, 
On this side touching Sin, on th' other Heaven." « 

And the long submission in gentleness and patience to the 
mother's love and empire in the cottage home has brightened 
Christian homes and Christian motherhood with a glory of con- 
secration and pre-figurements of heaven. For Christian women 
are not likely to forget, nor Christian men who honour a 
mother's name with filial devotion, and secret incense of 
homage when only the name and memory are left, nor Christian 
children most of all to whom the mother is an earthly divinity — ■ 
to forget how 

" Thenceforth, whom thousand worlds adore, 
He calls thee mother evermore ; 
Angel nor saint His face may see, 
Apart from what He took of thee." T 

1 J. Keble. 



154 JESUS CHRIST. 

And as He honoured the higher and holier provinces of 
woman's empire, the marriage union, the home, so He shed the 
rays of His compassion upon the dishonoured and the self- 
degraded. Such He won back to self-respect, to usefulness, to 
devoted service ; of such materials as the harlot He could 
manufacture saints. 

Side by side with the Christian homage of women, from the 
days of chivalry to those of their intellectual emancipation, 
may be placed by way of contrast the Jewish Morning Prayer, 
where the men in three consecutive benedictions, bless God 
" who hath not made me a Gentile — a slave — a woman.'' x Or 
we may compare such a high non-Christian religion as that of 
China, where the feet of girls are bound and cramped, and 
where " no generous sentiment tending to the amelioration of 
the social position of woman ever came from either " Confucius 
or Mencius. 2 Possibly the respect shown to women may have 
been at times pushed too far in the next Christian generation. 
For in the Corinthian Church there are indications of feminine 
usurpations of ecclesiastical authority in St. Paul's Epistles. 
And in the remarkable Epistle of St. Clement of Rome to the 
same Church about forty years later, the same irregularity calls 
for severe censure. 

And in this love and respect shown to those who have lost 
all, even for themselves, Christians have from the first seen an 
example. Christ could not only wash away guilt, He could 
renovate and re-create. And so the weak are made strong, the 
unclean clean, the sensual spiritual. In this way the moral 
laws of nature are constantly broken. The chains of evil habit 
and circumstance are snapped, sometimes by a sudden resurrec- 
tion, more commonly as in the history of society as a whole so 
in that of its units, by gradual disintegration of evil and integra- 
tion of good. The waifs of passion, the wrecks of stormy lust, 
the prodigal daughters, are sought and saved by Christ's 
workers, not in the contemptuous spirit of the proselytizer, or 
in the interests of sanitary science and public health, but by 
those who are armed with the purity of the One Pure and His 
compassionate love, or by those who have been rescued from 
the like dregs by His sweet mastery. 

1 Cf. Taylor, " Pirke Aboth," 5, " prolong not converse with a woman." 

2 Prof. Legge, "Religions of China," p. 111 



GATHERING SHADOWS. 155 

One of the greatest contrasts between Christianity as it now 
is, with all its imperfections and unrealized ideals, and non- 
Christianity may be seen to the advantage of the former, in the 
moral and social position, or no position, of women, where there 
has been no Christian influence to disenslave them. And 
where, as in India, there is beginning to show itself a tendency 
to raise them in the social, intellectual, and spiritual scale, it is, 
directly or indirectly, traceable, beyond any shadow of doubt, 
to the working of Christian teaching and practice in social and 
individual life. In the instruction and elevation of Indian 
women in their zenanas lies one of the most open doors to the en- 
trance of the one faith which leaves no fragment of life, social or 
individual, ungoverned, unpurified, unenfranchized, uncrowned. 

The holy charm, the loveable attractiveness of Christ's 
character is exemplified by the next incident. Perhaps a 
spectator of the un-Rabinnical tenderness to the children, or of 
some similar unconventional emotionalism, a young ruler threw 
himself impetuously at the Lord's feet (Mark x. 13 -, x. 17, and 
Synoptists). His haste, his question, his spirit, revealed the 
presence of a deep moral need shaking his soul. The answer of 
our Lord contained no new revelation, but a re-affirmation of 
the old. Let the young man examine himself and so let him 
prepare for eternal life. His conscience certified that he had 
been obedient after a Jewish manner. Christ then lifts the 
veil of the higher life. He was eternal life ; union with Him 
implied there and then the loss of all things. Such a demand 
could only be justified if the good Master were really God. 
The rich man must return to his original question and decide 
who He was — who made a claim so sweeping. 

The tremendous decision shown and demanded by Christ 
foreshadowed the approach of the final crisis. The time was 
very short, the fire would be very hot, only the whole-hearted 
would bear the strain. The same spirit breathes in the follow- 
ing warning about and to the wealthy. Times of dilemma come 
when the Christ follower will be called to sacrifice everything to 
Him. They may come to all. All then must share the sacrificial 
spirit and be ready, if called upon, for the forlorn hope. Such 
surrender brings its own reward. What has been given up is 
received again many times over 1 — with persecutions— in this 

1 The present writer heard a Colonial bishop (Rawle of Trinidad) dwell 
upon his own experience of the fulfilment of this promise — but without the 
darker side, persecutions 



I5t> JESUS CHRIST. 

present life. These words form another important contribution 
to the missionary charter of the Church ; for to the foreign 
warfare of Christ's soldiers they most literally apply. 

The many indirect warnings are now clenched by His re- 
iterated prediction of the Passion. " Behold we go up to Jeru- 
salem" (Luke xviii. 31, and Synoptists) — this, the long silent 
master-thought, now finds utterance. The details of the scene 
rise up minutely before Him even as they had flashed 

" In outline, dim, and vast," 

in fragmentary intuitions and scattered half-lights upon the 
prophets. What they saw in parts He saw wholly, but the 
disciples vaguely or not at all. So completely had the suffering 
aspect of Messiah's work crumbled away from Jewish memory 
that this detailed statement, and that too doubtless in a manner 
indescribably solemn, failed to be intelligible to them ; and the 
next question asked was the petition for pre-eminence, in the 
Messianic kingdom, by Zebedee's wife and her two sons (Mark 

x. 35). 

Jesus now crossed the Jordan. It was His Rubicon. A march 
across an arid waste brought the festal band to Jericho. (Luke 
xviii. 35 and Synoptists). A gleam of sunshine lighted up the 
way to storm and darkness. For the beautiful city of Palms 
and the plain of Jericho recalled warm and verdurous Galilean 
home, and the salvation of Zacchseus, the healing of the blind, 
the joyous crowds of pilgrims, suggest an interval of inward and 
outward gladness. There are no signs here of the rejection of 
the Messiah. Officials from the grand palace and gardens of 
Archelaus, soldiers from the forts of Herod which guarded the 
death-bed of their builder, merchants who have stopped to pur- 
chase balsam on their route to or from Arabia and Damascus, 
priests from the priestly city or their rural homes, and a many- 
coloured stream of Galilean and Perasan pilgrims, form a crowd 
of questioning onlookers as the Nazarene Prophet passes 
through the midst. The question of all questions was the 
absorbing one of the hour. All the minutiae of triviality which 
fill the minds of many even at great times, and moving moments, 
must have vanished at the living presence of the great Mystery 
passing on to the threatened death or to the crest of a Messianic 
revolution. 



GATHERING SHADOWS. 1 57 

'* All cognition is recognition." ■ For the most part unknown, 
because unrecognized in His fulfilments of Messianic law and 
prophecy, the Master of hearts stepped out into the fierce light 
that beats upon a public man by a direct challenge to social 
prejudice and local pique. The head of the customs is directly 
invited to become his host for the night, the most unpopular 
man in a focus of national life and prejudice. The spiritual 
intensity of the incident is shown in the instantaneousness of 
the publican's conversion. The corrupt child of an age of cor- 
ruption and fraud, steeped in an atmosphere of oppression on 
the one side, social suspicion, national aversion, and individual 
opposition on the other, is confronted for the first time of his 
life with absolute personal honesty, transparent truth, and single- 
mindedness. The hardened man of the world openly confessed 
his guilt to the world. Heart and life were changed at a 
stroke before the burning gaze of Incarnate Honour. Many 
previous doubtings of heart may have led up to this happy 
catastrophe. 

Jericho, as a place, is now a desolate wilderness. "The 
Bedouin lead the flocks across the plain as did the patriarchs of 
old." " But there is no other sign of human life." 2 The soil, 
as in so many parts of Palestine, is said to be as fertile as ever. 
A good government in that afflicted country would be as life 
from the dead in a land where Nature opens a bountiful bosom 
to farmer and agriculturist and engineer. The redemption of 
the soil of the Holy Land, its restoration to fruitfulness, to sani- 
tary well-being, to freedom from ruinous oppression, venial 
administration, and financial tyranny, is a worthier cause of a 
Crusade than even the recovery of the questioned site of the 
Holy Sepulchre. Christian politicians have here a golden 
opportunity for putting unexceptionable pressure upon the 
Porte ; Christian commerce and science an inviting field for 
regenerating efforts and richly rewarding work. May the Lord 
who there brought us salvation of body and soul help us to 
extend to it material salvation ! 

The discrepancies in the accounts of the healing of the two 
blind men at Jericho must be left as they are. At all events 
they prove the independence of the narratives, and the absence 
of collusion. The general credibility of the evangelists will not 
be destroyed by minute differences of detail, here or elsewhere. 

1 H. Spencer. 2 S. Manning, " Those Holy Fields," p. yj. 



158 JESUS CHRIST. 

The absence of any such differences would be far more suspi- 
cious than the presence. Some have supposed that the Old 
Testament and the Herodian Jericho are here confused in the 
accounts, but a brief examination of the passages negatives that 
hypothesis. Bengel's solution is more probable, that Christ heard 
one man cry for mercy as He entered and healed him, and 
Bartimaeus as He left the city. But common as blindness was, 
and is, in the East generally, and in Palestine, it is not impro- 
bable that He healed one on the way to Jericho, and that he 
told his recovery and the method of it, to two fellow sufferers. 
So the same scene may have taken place again as He left. 

A crowd of pilgrims had come up early to purify themselves 
before the feast. As they stood in groups in the Temple (John 
xi. 56) the uppermost question in their minds was where is 
Jesus ? St. John sketches this scene as illustrating his general 
plan of pourtraying the spiritual attitude of the people towards 
the Messiah, and as prelusive of the final decision. That deci- 
sion was the last result of a long series of intermediate rejections. 
It was deliberate on the part of the leaders at least. The causes 
which led up to it are indicated at every turn of the history, it 
was not a momentary outburst of temper, nor the rabid fury of 
blind fanaticism mistaken in means while worthy in ends. It 
was the climax of all the struggles in which the most favoured 
branch of fallen humanity had contended against God. 

While Jewish pilgrims were speculating about His coming to 
the passover Jesus spent the last Friday before the Passion in 
the now dearer home of Bethany. On the following day He 
shared the Sabbath feast with Mary and Martha and Lazarus ? 
and apparently other guests, in the house of Simon the Leper 
(Matt. xxvi. 6; Mark xiv. 3; John xii. 1). Mary's anoint- 
ing may have been prompted by some reference to His self- 
consecration by death, or the simple outpouring of a sisterly 
love made more fragrant by gratitude for a brother restored 
from the grave. But Christ saw a higher end fulfilled, as 
all action passes beyond itself to unseen Divine issues. He 
was already being embalmed for His burial, and some of it may 
actually have been used. The words were mysterious and 
suggestive. Yet only a week lay between the symbolic and 
actual unction. The outspoken objection of Judas is reported 
by St. John, not as a mere detail, but to reveal the hidden 
man of the heart. The moral attitude of Judas was no 



GATHERING SHADOWS. 1 59 

more sudden than that of the chief priests and Pharisees, or 
Mary and Martha's. The importance of this incident in its after- 
lights explains the Johannine repetition of the two previous 
Synoptist accounts in fuller personal portraiture. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE MESSIANIC ENTRY. THE CONTRADICTION OF SINNERS. 

" Now I behold how worldly gain is loss, — 
That weeks and days and hours that by us fleet, 
Must wear the Royal impress of the Cross." 

Isaac Williams. 

The Triumphal Entry — The Devil's stand — The Second Temple cleansing 
— The barren figtree — The "Day of Questions "—The Divine Con- 
troversialist — The Divine Apocalypse— Jewish Eschatology. 

The offering of Mary's homage is followed by the acclaiming 
welcome of the people. For one day He came unto His own 
and His own received Him — even on that day a minority 
despised and rejected Him. 

The importance, present and prospective, of the Triumphal 
Entry of the Messiah appears from the fourfold minuteness of 
the report. 

With the patient foresight of details, and the orderly method 
which marked the march of Jesus' plans, He sent forward two 
pioneers to loose and bring the ass's foal. 1 This detail of 
Zachariah's prophecy had not escaped His memory, nor failed 
of its aim. The Prince of Peace could not ride on the horse, 
the beast of war, into the City of Peace. 

The final decision was now coming. The King makes His 

1 The actual and metaphorical use by Christ of the animal world 
suggests per se its participation in man's recovery, and in the resurrection to 
a new earth of "glorious liberty," as was suggested before at the manger. 



THE MESSIANIC ENTRY. l6l 

last offer to the Royal City. For once He will enter in royalty 
and imposing pageant. They had rejected Him upon His own 
evidence of dignity and worth. Will they accept Him at the 
head of an army of peace, supported by serried troops of 
Galilean pilgrims, their acknowledged Lord and Prince 
Messiah ? Even the people are declaring for Him. Will they 
change their minds ? The verdict must be given this day. 
The last plea is uttered. The last witness has been called. 
The question is now set before the nation, and the Holy City 
especially, for the last time. Jesus asks it in word. Jesus asks 
it in action. In word and in action the all but universal reply 
is made. There is not the slightest evidence that Jesus 
expected to take the allegiance of the people by storm " by 
suddenly unfurling the Messianic banner and overwhelming the 
murmurs of opposition by the rejoicing shouts of the people." 

From first to last He knew perfectly well how it would end. 
The temporary enthusiasm of the pilgrims did not confuse 
Him. Nor did He turn bitterly away with cynical contempt for 
mob acclamations. The vision of a fallen Jerusalem, a 
desolate city, a ruined house of God, shows that His eyes were 
looking beyond the gates of the present, and that His heart was 
brooding over His people's sorrows, not His own. We need 
not therefore suppose that the cheers of the festal crowd were 
ungenuine or uncomforting. We may rather see " in part," and 
prophesy " in part," a vision of a Royal entry into the anti- 
typal City of God, of waving palms, and multitudinous concor- 
dant voices, greeting and accompanying the King of Glory. 

It is impossible to read the long and darkening tragedy of 
Jewish rejections of God, first in His messengers, and last in 
His Son, without detecting a superhuman influence at work. 
Behind his unconscious instruments the master of evil was 
busy. Annas and Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate, Judas, were tools 
of the anti-Messiah. He was at bay. The gates of hell were 
threatened ; the whole hierarchy of hell mustered for defence. 
Jesus Christ came to destroy the works of the devil. The 
devil may be credited with a better contemporary knowledge 
of that fact than ignorant erring humanity. Whatever power 
he could exercise over a fallen and partly enslaved race in the 
plenitude of his spiritual intelligence, in the fulness of his 
command of all the resources and powers of evil, he must have 
put out in his self-defence. He carried the war into the 

12 



162 JESUS CHRIST. 

enemy's country. The loss of Judas, the breaking of the 
apostolic company, the denial of the leading apostle, and the 
desertion of all of them, are tributes to the vast organized 
activity of Satan's final stand. After three years of the trans- 
cendent personal influence which had been acting upon them 
night and day, he succeeded in wresting one captive from the 
strong grasp of Christ, and in shaking the allegiance of His 
chosen. He had already succeeded in turning the Messianic 
nation from the Divine Messianic Ideal. He had blinded the 
most enlightened, he had turned religion itself into an anti- 
Messianic engine. He had corrupted and perverted the truth ; 
he had maintained an unbroken hostility to it through the 
dominant party. He had united every worldly interest in a 
common league. He had by masterly manoeuvres, bound 
together in a common cause and a common course, persons and 
interests so antagonistic as the Roman governor, the Idumean 
king, the Jewish high priesthood, and the masses. All hated 
one another but shook hands. And now the final issue of ages 
of progressing evil, advancing corruption, and accumulating 
falsehood, had reached its climax, and the full volume of the 
gathered momentum of actual and transmitted evil under its 
acknowledged and, so to speak, lawful head, guided by a super- 
human will, ordered by a stupendous intellect enriched with 
incalculable experience of all the sciences and successes of 
wrong, was launched at the head, and at the heart, and at the 
life of one devoted Man. The Week of the Passion was the 
time of times. The field of battle was the City of God. 
Humanity was the prize of the Victor. Till the hour and in the 
hour of his absolute rout the victory appeared to rest with the 
Prince of Darkness. 

The Triumphal Entry need not be described in detail. The 
picture is well known, and Dean Stanley's memorable contrast 
of the scene that then was and the scene that now is is too 
perfect for broken quotation. 

We pass on with the silent King and shouting crowd to the 
Temple. He looked round about on all. He might have seen a 
Temple still cleansed and for ever purified, the home of a re- 
pentant people, ready to welcome the Messiah on their knees. 
But Temple and people were uncleansed. The irreverence of 
the Temple represented a people who had a name but not a life. 

The night was spent at Bethany. Sleepless watch and 



THE MESSIANIC ENTRY. 163 

prayer may have caused the hunger of the early morrow. Very 
early Jesus left the village, well known as the modern El Aziriyeh, 
in its sheltered peace. A single figtree stood out on the sky- 
line as they walked on to the city, like the u one tree " on a 
Kentish hill. 

It bore neither new nor old fruit, but leaves only. The 
curse of Christ blasted the false tree ; it was barren, so 
untrue to its mission, it had not yielded its life in the labour 
of bearing the fruit ; it was false in its display of leaves, instead 
of, or without, fruit. In both respects it typified the people, for 
whose fruits the Lord hungered unsatisfied. It was an object- 
lesson, an acted parable, a re-telling of the story of the Fall, 
and a rehearsal of the Last Judgment, " Depart from Me, ye 
cursed." 

The second Messianic cleansing of the Temple follows. The 
first had been that of the Messiah Prophet, the Messiah Patriot. 
The second was that of the Messiah Judge, the Messiah King. 
It was a repeated miracle of moral impetus, an outburst of 
" sublime and generous anger." * Those who look only at the 
gentle and meek lights in the human character of Christ, forget 
the fire and victorious force which lay hid in the reserves of 
His strength. His was neither the meekness of resigned, 
Hindu-like inactivity, nor the nerveless gentleness of the spirit- 
less, but the tenderness of the strongest of the strong under the 
restraint of self-governing love and unfathomed compassion. 
And His words were as trenchant, as incisive, as powerful, as 
His deeds. The robbers were cast out from the House of 
Prayer. The carriers of vessels were stopped on their profane 
walk. The place was cleared, and as quickly refilled with the 
blind and lame, who came to be healed. 

" How soon a smile of God can change the world ! " 3 

And to the noise of wrangling traffic succeeded the ringing 
acclamations of childish hosannas. Up the porticoes and 
through court to court sounded the welcome of the only lips 
in Jerusalem, outside the Christian company, which did not cry 
Crucify. Perhaps they were Galilean children ; "perhaps those 
children of the Levites who acted as choristers in the Temple." 3 

1 J. A. Symonds on Dante's " Divine Comedy." 

2 R. Browning, " In a Balcony." 3 Edersheim, ii. 381. 



164 JESUS CHRIST. 

The remainder of the day was occupied in teaching. The 
approaching feast and its Messianic applications must have 
pointed its drift. A very deep impression was made upon the 
Paschal multitudes. The after-labours of the apostles must 
have profited by these lessons to large audiences. Their rapid 
successes on and after Pentecost were prepared for, and they 
themselves were being made ready for ministries of healing and 
preaching in large centres of population, and before mixed 
crowds, as they had already been in training for missionary 
tours and rural evangelizing. Again Christ left the city and 
sought a night's shelter at Bethany. Perhaps the rest was 
necessary to Himself and His apostles ; for the night was 
coming when no man could work, and for the work of the 
remaining hours of life's day all His strength was needed. 

The third day opened with the early morning walk over the 
verdurous Mount of Olives. The figtree, now withered, was 
again passed, and made the text of a lesson in the power of 
prayer ; its destructive power over evil and difficulty 
conditioned by the faith and forgiving love of the sup- 
plicant. " We remember, that the promise had a special 
application to the apostles and early disciples ; we also re- 
member, how difficult to them was the thought of full forgive- 
ness of offenders and persecutors : and again, how great the 
temptation to avenge wrongs and to wield miraculous power in 
the vindication of their authority." 1 And as aggressiveness 
was to be the constant policy of Christian warfare, the temper 
must be of impersonal, selfless aggression. 

When Jesus had entered the Temple Courts and was walking 
about and teaching, the Chief Priests and scribes and elders 
came up to Him. This was the first result of the party 
deliberations which had been taking place since the raising of 
Lazarus, which had been embittered by the Triumphal Entry, 
and exasperated by the second implied denunciation of the 
priestly profits made by the Temple traffic, which latter must 
have been seriously diminished and perhaps entirely stopped 
for this Passover. They put a question to Jesus. It was the 
first of a series which has given to the day the name of the 
" Day of Questions." It was no new one, nor asked for the 
first time. What was His authority ? The Lord's answer was 
the same as before. He identified His authority with John's, 
1 Edersheim, ii. p. 377. 



THE CONTRADICTION OF SINNERS. 1 65 

so far as the greater more than covers the less. They stood 
upon the same platform, authenticated by the same direct 
inspiration, and accredited by the same Power. If John was 
of God, Jesus was of God. If John was of God, what he said 
of Jesus was of God. An acceptance of John's baptism and 
teaching as heavenly, involved the acceptance of the claims of 
Jesus, who was the end of all John's preaching. Whose duty 
was it but theirs to examine the evidence and to pronounce 
official judgment ? Their answer " we know not " condemned 
themselves. They abdicated their position and evaded their 
duty, and denied their moral and social responsibility. It was 
an Agnostic attitude to adopt towards God, who had, or had 
not, sent John ; who had, or had not, sent Jesus. 

They feared the people and durst not before them publicly 
pronounce the claim of the great prophet invalid. They acted 
upon policy. Expediency was their touchstone. Truth was a 
matter of indifference. The venue must be changed ; the 
ground of controversy shifted ; another issue raised. To 
appeal to Rome upon any religious question was a national 
apostasy. It was to betray the Church to the State, and that 
State, heathen, hostile, idolatrous, and impersonated in hated, 
guilty, and corrupt officials. To an honest and patriotic Jew it 
was a downright appeal to the devil. Yet would Annas and 
Caiaphas, and their tools, shrink from calling in upon an 
ecclesiastical question the very power which had invested them 
with rank and office ? 

But Jesus did not act upon the defensive only. The three 
parables from Matt. xxi. 28-xxii. 14, were a counter attack. 
The burden of the prophets was taken up, the familiar imagery 
of the vineyard was adopted as the veil of a personal denunci- 
ation ; and in no softened tones or hesitating accents the 
judicial wrath of the king was sternly announced. 

Neither entreaty nor menace, neither gentleness nor anger, 
equally proceeding from a love which would leave no stone 
unturned, no moral lever unapplied to petrified hearts and 
darkened understandings, had any effect upon the set hatred 
of the Pharisees. 

They were past repentance. But the people were not im- 
penetrable. For the sake of the sheep their shepherds must 
be publicly exposed and shamed. The direct, or indirect, 
polemics of Jesus were dictated by necessity, not opportunism. 



166 JESUS CHRIST. 

They were the utterance of uniform charity, not the explosion 
of party passion or outraged feelings. They were the utterance 
of plain truth by One who knew the whole truth and for truth's 
sake must speak it — in behalf of God, for the sake of the false 
hypocrites themselves, and for the sake of those whom they 
had deceived, and would deceive. The Jewish nation of to-day 
suggests the most cogent evidence of the necessity of the 
withering exposure of the hierarchy. They have inherited the 
Rabbinical learning, and perpetuated the Rabbinical tradition- 
alism ; they have as a nation adopted the debased Rabbinical 
Messiah for the true and Scriptural Christ. But signs are not 
wanting that the hearts of Israel are beginning to be drawn to 
the true Messiah. 

On the same day two cheering incidents occurred. In the 
storm of judicial wrath which swept over the soul of the 
Messiah in the face of the enemies of God's righteousness 
there were bright interludes. There was the poor widow in the 
Court of the Women, who cast in her " two Perutahs " — all she 
had, the germ of the goodly company of mothers and daughters 
of Christ who spend and are spent for their Master. There 
was the momentous and fruitful inquiry of certain Greeks. 
They must have been seekers after truth, who had found in 
Jewish Scripture, doubtless in the Septuagint version, or in 
later pseudepigraphic writing, or among Jewish home in- 
fluences, some satisfaction of their spiritual wants. Greek 
thought could lead them to moral and asthetic self-culture, 
Greek art could lead them to the beautiful, but no abstract or 
impersonal ideals can satisfy a hungry soul. The Law brought 
before them an Ideal Personality, but must have, even in the 
watered Septuagint, created the sense of infinite distance be- 
tween Him and men accustomed to anthropomorphic concep- 
tions of God. The Law could not solve the question, it could 
only point to its solution. Some such lines of inquiry, whether 
morally or intellectually, must have been followed by the 
Greeks who pressed Philip for a personal interview with Jesus. 
Philip may have been passing through the Court of the Gentiles. 
A stone balustrade (Soreg) parted the Greeks from Jesus in the 
Court of the Women, which was open to both sexes, and where 
public meetings took place. The Greek inscription it bore has 
been lately discovered by M. Clermont Ganneau, and ran as 
follows — 



THE CONTRADICTION OF SINNERS. 167 

" no foreigner to proceed 

"within the partition wall 

and enclosure around the 

Sanctuary ; whoever is 

caught in the same 

will on that account be liable 

to incur death." 

The news of the quest of the Greek proselytes made a very deep 
impression upon Jesus. Since the Magians sought His infant 
bed it was the first Christward movement of the Gentile world. 
It was spontaneous and self-originated. Jesus must have 
stepped down into the Court of the Gentiles and in their 
presence delivered His soul of the Creed of the Cross. The 
grain of wheat was a single example of the universal law of 
self-sacrifice, which beginning in Nature, ascended to human 
nature. The Son of Man Himself obeyed that law ; His 
service required it ; God would honour it. The death He 
would die, and the life it would bring and the power of His 
own attraction thereby and thereafter over all, came vividly 
before Him. And a voice from heaven authenticated His 
prophetic word and prayer. Here was another missionary 
lesson to those who would soon welcome the men of Corinth 
and Ephesus, Rome and Alexandria, Antioch and Babylon, into 
the liberty, fraternity, and equality of the faith. Those Greeks 
and that crowd which heard of Christ's lifting up must have 
been prepared to put His word and act together, when they 
saw it in three days with their own eyes. But the Christian 
syllogism requires the touch of the Holy Spirit to connect the 
premises. In His light would they see the Light. 

This Tuesday was possibly the most laborious day, excepting 
the last, in the earthly life of Jesus. He met in turn every 
assailant. He silenced Pharisees, Scribes, Herodians, Sad- 
ducees. He lifted up His voice to the crowds. It was the 
final day of debate. He was compelled to be a man of strife 
and contention. Such a day of mental and physical exertion 
must have exhausted the human spirit of Jesus. It was a 
spiritual martyrdom for the truth's sake. Mind and body were 
much more than overworked. Yet as He went homeward on 
His way out of the Temple He had more to say, and it must 
be said. What it must have cost Him can only be faintly 
realized by prophets whose hearts break at the message they 



l68 JESUS CHRIST. 

cannot muffle. Necessity was laid upon Him. Christ felt what 
He said, but said little of what He felt. The deeps of His 
sympathetic sorrow and yearning desire agonized His soul 
before the final darkness encompassed Him round. 

As they were leaving the Holy City it was evening. They 
walked up the Mount of Olives, perhaps to rest, perhaps to look 
at the crimson flushing the white and gold of the Temple mount, 
and the long shadows of the massy walls. The red rays lingered 
over the royal city as its Sun of righteousness was departing, 

"an awful sign and tender, 
Like the Blood of the Redeemer shown on earth and sky." x 

They had often seen the Temple in its glory before. But just 
now, perhaps under some such striking atmospheric effect, and 
with the connecting thread of some lingering ill-understood 
words of the day in their mind as they went out of the Temple, 
they came to the Lord and directed His particular attention. 

Christ's own Messianic predictions and their sense of His 
prophetic powers supplied a basis for a lesson upon this majestic 
text. The flames of Jerusalem would re-write it in letters of 
fire. The early Christian Church would never be able to forget 
that the direst calamity that ever fell upon the house of Israel 
was clearly predicted by Him who wept over its coming 
shadows. The crash and downfall of the Jewish Church re- 
verberated through the Jewish and Christian world. And the 
prophetic discourses of the Lord, which must at the time have 
thrilled the disciples with wondering awe and horror, must have 
come to the ears and minds of many, and accentuated in their 
creed the belief in that Second Coming foreshadowed in the 
same visions of judgment. This may help to account for the 
wide and strong feeling which filled early Christians of the 
nearness of the Lord's return. 

Christ had declared Himself a Prophet all His life. The great 
prophecy on the Mount of Olives marks the climax of His 
prophesyings. It was the great Messianic Apocalypse. The 
occasion, the associations, would impress the memory of His 
words, while the surprising novelty and un-Jewish originality of 
them would shock. Voice and manner were as sublime as the 
burden of His prophecy, with some touches, it may be, of the 

1 Jean Ingelow, " Requiescat in pace." 



THE CONTRADICTION OF SINNERS. 169 

rapture of prophetic ecstasy, without any loss of self-command 
or merely emotional excitement ; and underlying all, streaming 
over all, the fulness of perfect sympathy, Divine and human, 
with all that was on His side in the time to come, lighted by 
perfect insight, welling from a heart at one with God. If the 
style is the man, the Man Jesus was not less great than His 
words, as from the mountain over against the Temple He looked 
down the horizons of the aeons — the holy city, in division and 
fratricidal strife, a ruin and desolation where the Temple was, a 
scattered people, the world a greater city of confusion and divi- 
sion, but in its midst a fair Temple, made without hands, gradu- 
ally rising, bearing the Name of names ; and, in the farther 
distance, the lightning rush of angels, the shaking of the powers 
of heaven, the Son of Man descending with power and great 
glory, the Judgment, the Trial, the passing away of all but words 
eternal with the breath of His eternity. 

Upon the devout imagination of one apostle the visions of 
judgment made the deepest mark. In the Apocalypse of the 
Messiah we have the germ of the Apocalypse of John. But the 
Lord from heaven supplemented and authenticated what the 
Lord on earth had outlined. 

Nor were the disciples altogether unprepared on purely Jewish 
grounds for eschatological Messianic conceptions. The disciples 
must have known the Book of Daniel, which exercised so great 
an influence upon Jewish thought that it became the parent of 
a long line of Apocalypses with symbolical historic pictures and 
vaticinations. The visions of Ezekiel were, by St. John at least, 
minutely known and realized. The ideas expressed in the 
Apocalyptic and Pseudepigraphic literature must have assisted 
in the formation of their Messianic conceptions in this as in 
other aspects. The way then was prepared for the conception 
of the Son of Man in His glory as Judge. 

Pictorial visions had been made public of wars and confusions 
and iniquity abounding among men, hostilities between God's 
people and the nations, and the overthrow of the latter ; in later 
documents by the Messiah Himself, or by the Most High to 
usher in His coming. " The slaughter of enemies before the 
Messianic era would be at once consummated by a universal 
judgment, or something very like it, on men and fallen angels ;" x 

1 Stanton, p. 299, foil, for detailed quotation and comparison, and Eders- 
heim ii. 433, foil. 



I/O JESUS CHRIST. 

or else, and more commonly, the Messiah's reign was of fixed 
duration, "and the universal judgment was placed at the con- 
clusion of it, after which would follow finally 'the world to 
come."' 1 The woes of the Messiah (Chebley shel MashiacK) 
were a common theme. The future blessedness of the righteous, 
''the accursed valley" for "all those who speak with their 
mouths unseemly words against God, and speak impudently 
concerning His majesty" (Enoch xxvii. 2, 3). In connection 
with the Day of Judgment, " The gulf of torments shall appear, 
and opposite to it the place of rest ; the furnace of Gehenna 
shall be revealed, and opposite to it the paradise of pleasures " 
(4 Esdras vi. 1-4). 

Yet comparison of Jewish and Christian eschatology shows 
that where the former left the language of psalmists and pro- 
phets, it often fell from the sublime into the grotesque, from the 
ipiritual to the material and earthly. The Christian conception 
corrected, refined, simplified, purified, dignified, ennobled, 
spiritualized in the process of transformation and promotion, 
i he Christian conception was a much higher and deeper and 
larger structure than the Jewish. The distance between the two 
is measurable by reading the Book of Enoch side by side with 
the visions on Patmos. 

The double aspect of the Lord's Apocalyptic discourse is 
plain upon the face of it. It was both historical and spiritual. 
Historical, in so far as it bore upon the immediate dangers and 
difficulties of the early Church, and especially upon the catas- 
trophe which would swallow up Jerusalem and the whole fabric 
of Church and State which centred in the Temple ; it was 
spiritual and unchronological, so far as it pourtrayed in vivid 
colours, but in outline only, the militant condition of the Church 
of Christ, its sufferings, its enemies, its unceasing progress fro'm 
nation to nation, till the consummation of the age, and the 
Parousia of the Messiah in His glory. The object of the address 
was not to satisfy the speculative superstitiousness which is 
always peering into the darkness of the unrevealed, but to create 
a character unshaken by chance and change, a temper of spirit 
and life not changing with changing environments, but perma- 
ment and unalterable. 2 It was also calculated to destroy falsified, 

1 Edersheim. 

2 Gordon's watchword, "Be not greatly moved," expresses the passive 
side of this truth, the Christian's defensive position. 



THE CONTRADICTION OF SINNERS. 171 

materialized, and realistic conceptions of " the days of the 
Messiah." The "coming age" (Athid labho) merging into 
11 the world to come " (O/am habbd) was very different from any 
of Rabbinical fancy. 

The Messianic yoke had as yet been comparatively light and 
easy. The disciples had been in "the boyhood of religion." 1 
The fiery trial awaited them. They were now entering into the 
troubled waters of storm and shadow, through which the gospel 
fishing-vessel would fight its peaceless way of peace to the 
haven. The life of the Master, looked back over from the 
brightened heights of adoring memory, flooded the whole of His 
words with light. As He had been, so they would be in the 
world. Their past, and yet more their future experience with 
Him, first visibly, then invisibly, would be a repetition of His. 
The false Christs, the false prophets, the persecutors, the 
physical, the mental, the social, the spiritual adversities and 
adversaries, were not the accidental difficulties of the childhood 
of the Church and the faith. They were the inseparable environ- 
ment of the warfare of the Christ and of the Christ's, whereby a 
process of selection 2 and elimination would sift the strong and 
true. 

The great shock of conflict between the Christian and the 
Judaizer has been better understood of late, however magnified 
into irreconcilable antagonisms. Within the precincts of the 
faith there would be the dissensions which even the living pre- 
sence of the absolute Master did not entirely check. Without 
there would be the active hostility of disintegrated cults and 
philosophies, and the vis inertia of deadened indifference. Yet 
in the calm presage of certain progressive victory, the Messiah 
armed His Messianic community for a world-wide warfare. The 
parables enforce the same practical and doctrinal truths as the 
apocalyptic discourse. The reiteration, the fulness, the peremp- 
toriness of style and description, indicate the strength of the 
impression the Lord wished to make and His own assured con- 
fidence. 

1 Bp. Milman, " Love of the Atonement," 
8 " The elect " (Matt. xxiv. 29). 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE DIVINE SACRIFICE. 

14 What marvel, when the Lord our God most High, 
Clothed in our flesh, was lifted up to die, 
If then His Godhead to His Manhood gave. 
Merit and force a thousand worlds to save ? " 

W. Bright, D.D. 

Judas traitor — Wednesday in retreat — The Last Supper — Gethsemane — 
The arrest — The Divine Prisoner before Annas, before Caiaphas, before 
Pilate, before Herod — Judas' end — Before Pilate again — Ecce Homo ! — 
Round the Cross — The Seven Words — The Atonement. 

Once more Jesus withdrew Himself. A Jewish Messiah would 
have raised the popular tumult dreaded by the Rabbis. The 
Son of Man refuses the opportunity and passes into a sacred 
silence of preparation. The day of apocalypse, of warning, of 
prophecy, is followed by a day perhaps of prayer and sacred 
conversation with the disciples. We can hardly be wrong in 
finding here the explanation of Judas' final change. Under the 
plain outspokenness of the Lord's Tuesday words, the last shred 
of a hope of a Jewish and a worldly Messiah had been destroyed. 
Judas wanted a version of the Satanic Messiah of the Third 
Temptation. Failing that He would join the anti-Messianic 
party. So far from being false to himself he would be false to 
his Master, and true to himself. There is not the slightest 
evidence to support recent attempts to whitewash the traitor. 
Whether he ever made such excuses to himself as that the 
Master would be able to deliver Himself by His own wonder- 
working power, or had any secondary intention of forcing His 



THE DIVINE SACRIFICE. 173 

hand, and compelling Him to declare Himself as the Messiah, 
it is bootless to inquire. The psychological gospel shows the 
real spring of his action (Luke xxii. 3 ; and later John xiii. 27) : 
Satan entered into him. He decided for evil. Love, honour, 
conscience, benefits, and blessings, common prayers, a common 
hope, were not worth thirty pieces of silver. His Messianic 
ideal had all along been self. His Messiah must enrich and 
advance His friends. He had been mercifully denounced as a 
devil. The plain personal truth had not won him " the grace 
of repentance." 1 He had stolen from the common fund which 
had been entrusted to him as the man of business capacity. 
What should have been and was meant for his wealth became 
an occasion of falling. 

His illusion was over. His ambitious hopes were broken. 
In bitter disappointment, and the low cunning of hate, he would 
make a bargain and save something for himself out of the com- 
ing wreck. Secretly he steals away from the little company, 
perhaps pleading Paschal preparations, and makes his offer to 
the priestly council. " From the very Temple Treasury," 2 with 
the sacrifical money, at the hands of the responsible officers of 
the Church, the apostate apostle is paid for the blood of the 
Redeemer. The legal price of a slave is " weighed out " (Zech. 
xi. 12) piece by piece, thirty shekels. 3 It is not to be wondered 
at that Wednesday as well as Friday were kept as fasts by the 
early Church. 

Wednesday was the 13th Nisan. On the evening, the 14th, 
began and with it the Passover, " in the popular and canonical 
sense." 4 This was the Day of Unleavened Bread (Luke xxii. 7). 
Peter and John were sent to slay the lamb and to make ready the 
Paschal Supper. Armed with provident instructions Judas may 
have bought the lamb on the previous day, and " on his way from 
the sheep-market to the Temple, to have his lamb inspected, 
may have learned that the chief priests and and Sanhedrists 
were just then in session in the palace of the high priest close 
by." 5 Some of its blood was cast at the base of the altar, and 
amongst thousands of other worshippers and Paschal pilgrims, 
going to and fro the Court of the Priests, the two bore the lamb 
to the large upper chamber of the unnamed friend. 

The Paschal Supper was the highest point reached in the 

1 Clement of Rome. 2 Edersheim, ii. 477. 

s Worth about 2s. 6d. each. 4 Edersheim, ii. 479. s Ibid, ii. 486 



174 JESUS CHRIST. 

self-revelation of Christ to heart believers, as the Cross was the 
highest point in His revelation to all the world. All sweet and 
holy communions with Him, in prayer and in sacrifice, in 
chanted psalm and quiet song of praise, in teaching and in learn- 
ing, in still meditation, in suasive discourse, public or private, in 
mighty works and ministries of miracle, met here in a central 
core. The discourse at Capernaum had prepared their minds 
for the truth of spiritually receiving the Bread of Life, the 
miracles upon the loaves had interpreted His power and bounty 
of supply even of daily bread. The frequency of His bodily 
contact with the sick in His healing treatments had revealed 
glimpses of the mysterious and benedictory Divinity outflowing 
from His Body. The Lord's prayer for daily bread and the 
beatitude upon the hungry and thirsty after righteousness sug- 
gested more than the supply of physical want. The Paschal 
meal itself, the sacrificial time and place and act, the common 
feast, the broken bread, the outpoured wine — all under the 
historic, under the devotional associations which they conveyed 
to Israelites steeped in the lore of their fathers, worshipping 
with their worship, taught in part their Christward application, 
went to their deepest heart of memory, of devotion. 

There was the still fresh impression of the burning words and 
works of Tuesday, and the restful prayers or communings of 
the day before. There was the dark sweet shadow of the Cross 
bathing the whole scene in its coming glory, and breaking in a 
flood of inexpressible tenderness upon the sacrificial Lamb Him- 
self. Laden with the weight of such high and holy, such sad 
and joyous memories, it was but natural that every day in the 
week, which became the Lord's own, became a day for repre- 
senting the memorial of His death, and the witness to His 
resurrection, and the medium of His imparted life. The Holy 
Communion and the Commemorative Sacrifice, the Lord's 
Supper and the Eucharist or Thanksgiving, are names which 
express aspects of priceless truth and beauty impossible for 
Christian devotion, unheated by controversial discords, to spare. 
Many are the dear memorials of Christ. This the chiefest. 

Viewed under these converging lights of the past, in its present 
cheer and solace to Himself and His faithful, in its future blessed- 
ness to the children of His kingdom, and its typical relation to 
yet far-off Supper of the Lamb, we understand in part how the 
Passover was by th? rd desired with desire. And this 



THE DIVINE SACRIFICE. 1 75 

sacrament, like its twin sister of the gospel, was into His death 
but into His life, into His suffering and into His glory, into His 
humiliation and into His exaltation. 

At the Supper Christ took the head of the low table, St. 
John was on His right. 1 " But the chief place next to the Master 
would be that to His left, or above Him. In the strife of the 
disciples which should be accounted the greatest this had been 
claimed, and we believe it to have been actually occupied, by 
Judas." After the foot-washing 2 and its speaking humility and 
its gentle pathetic warning to the traitor, and the scriptural ap- 
peal to his conscience in the language of the psalmist, the next 
incident of moment where every detail is most precious was the 
plain public declaration of the betrayal. It is spoken of as still 
in the future, for though more than begun, there was still the 
hope of leaving the last blow unstruck. The words and the 
sop struck home to a heart which had now ceased to be human. 
Satan and his own hell were there, and even the final thunder 
of woe upon that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed fell 
harmless upon it. There is no text in the Bible so awful as 
that which follows in the record of him who lay upon the Lord's 
bosom, and was parted by Him only from the one apostle who 
was never seen again — " He then having received the sop went 
out straightway : and it was night." 

And now the atmosphere was changed. There was room for 
that Christian Passover which should take the place of the 
Jewish, but much more than surpass it. " If we are asked what 
part of the Paschal Service corresponds to the 'Breaking of 
Bread,' we answer, that this .being really the last Pascha, and 
the cessation of it, our Lord anticipated the later rite, intro- 
duced when, with the destruction of the Temple, the Paschal as 
all other sacrifices ceased," anticipated, i.e., the custom after 
the meal of breaking and partaking "as aphiqomon, or after-dish, 
of that half of the unleavened cake which had been broken and 
put aside at the beginning of the Supper." So too with the 
third cup at the close of the Supper, or Cup of Blessing, was 
connected the institution of the cup. 

A fourth cup followed, and the remainder of the Hallel (Psa. 
cxv.-cxviii.) formed the Eucharistic Hymn of Thanksgiving. 

1 For diagram and details see Edersheim, ii. 494. 

* Still practised among the Greeks and Latins in Jerusalem. 



176 JESUS CHRIST. 

This was followed by the spoken thoughts which St. John alone 
brought out from the treasure of his memories of that 
" Food, so awful and so sweet " s 

and of His words of after-communion. We have, as it were, a 
continuation Of the prophetic utterances of the Tuesday. But 
the tone is different. He has now not the world in view, but His 
own redeemed children and faithful friends. He speaks heart to 
heart, soul to soul. He dwells not so much on conflict and 
opposition, and on the forces of evil in their progressive mani- 
festation, as on the inward glory and light and peace of His own 
in the midst of the world, in spite of the Evil One. Above all, 
He prepares them for the coming Paraklete, 2 Advocate, Com- 
forter, Spirit of Truth. No words of Christ are sweeter with 
the breath of love, none clearer or more definite in doctrine. 
Christianity was never so tender, as when it was most doctrinal, 
on the lips of its Head; but, alas, speaking the truth and speak- 
ing it in love have at times parted company. 

After listening to the Lord's words of communion with His 
friends, we are suffered, as they were, or one of them, to draw 
nearer still and hear His words of communion with the Father. 
It is the high-priestly prayer of self-consecration, and of the 
consecration of those whom the Father had given Him. The 
intercession in their behalf follows — that they may be one. 
Whether in the Temple, as some suppose, or in the open air, or 
more probably in the stillness of the same chamber which would 
so often afterwards be perfumed with the incense of Christian 
devotion, the Divine Prayer was breathed, is unknowable. 
Alike in communion with the Father and in communion with 
the disciples, there breathes the same tender tone of strong 
hope. Jesus calmly, in the felt shadow of the Passion, looks 
forward and upward in the certitude of triumph. 

Cheered and strengthened by the sweet song of praise, if the 
One Hundred and Eighteenth Psalm, laden with Messianic 
music, 3 the little company passed out of the still crowded city, 
across the torrent Kidron, which separated the Mount of Olives 
from the Temple mount, to the garden of the oil press, even 
now, possibly, rocognizable at the traditional site. The un- 

1 Hymns Ancient and Modern, 322, by Dr. Bright. 

2 On Paraklete, vide Watkins on St. John, appendix. 

3 See especially vers. 22 to end. 



THE DIVINE SACRIFICE. \JJ 

speakable horror of darkness into which Christ's soul entered is 
past human thought. Soul and Body could not have endured 
the strain but for the brief respites of return to the sleeping 
disciples, and the more strengthening visit of one pitiful angel. 
Here we are in the deep of "the unknown sufferings" and the 
dissection of such incalculable anguish may be spared, noting 
only for devotional attention the agonizing wrestle of the 
human soul in the full force of redemptive desire, the absolute 
meek submission of the human will to the Father's will, the 
spiritual and inward torture pervading even the whole prostrate 
body of the Divine Son of Man. 

And now the solemn silence of the garden is broken. Nearer 
and nearer draws the hurrying of a crowd, the tramp of armed 
feet, a confused tumult of lights and arms flashing through the 
trees. The calm words of the Master, Arise, let us go hence, 
fall clearly, like thunder drops before a storm, on the ears of 
the aroused sleeper. " It is well known that there is seldom 
any strictly defined account of moments such as these and 
those which followed it. The terrible deed is accomplished by 
one stroke after another ; and before full consciousness of the 
situation could be attained, Jesus had fallen into the hands of 
His enemies." x "All the disciples forsook Him and fled ;" but 
one young man, who some believe to be Mark, and others 
Lazarus, casting his sindon about him, began to follow Him, only 
to flee, too, leaving his garment behind. 

The Divine Prisoner is led to Annas. Annas, like all the 
members of the Temple aristocracy, was a Sadducee. Doubtless 
the vast wealth his family derived from their famous booths, 
and the cunning intrigues they carried on with the Roman 
power, won the High Priesthood for Annas, for his five sons, 
for his son-in-law, Caiaphas, and for his grandson. The 
Pontificate and the Temple traffic had almost become a mono- 
poly, " and the family of Hanan and their serpent hissings " 
were accursed of the people. What passed between Jesus and 
the anti- Messianic leader was brief, but decisive. The High 
Priest questioned Jesus about His disciples and His doctrine 
(John xviii. 19-23). The former part of the question may have 
been directed to ascertain what social or political support He 
might be thought to count upon. The preliminary examination 
was informal and private and was, after an interval, followed 

1 Weiss, iii. 326. 
13 



I78 JESUS CHRIST. 

by the formal examination before Caiaphas. All discrepancies x 
disappear if, as is not unreasonable to suppose, Annas had 
lodgings in the official residence of the High Priest, Caiaphas, 
and that consequently both were present at both examinations. 

Two of the disciples had soon recovered from their panic. 
John obtained entrance into the inner court. Peter stood with- 
out, till he too was let in by the maid who kept the door. John 
was unnoticed, and had perhaps gone to the upper gallery, in 
one of whose apartments the prisoner was being tried. Peter 
mingled with the crowd of menials round the coal fire, which 
the chilly spring night made welcome. It was a time of intense 
depression. From the heavenly altitudes of the holy Paschal 
communion the apostles had sunk to the lowest deeps of 
sorrowing disappointment. Unnerved, unstrung, out of heart, 
borne down on a wave of violent reaction, without any sensible 
spiritual support, the apostle who had not watched in the 
garden and prayed in the hour of temptation flinched and fell. 

At the first flush of dawn the leading priests, elders, and 
Sanhedrists came hurrying to the High Priest's palace. " Thus 
much, at least, is certain, that it was no formal, regular meeting 
of the Sanhedrim All Jewish order and law would have been 
grossly infringed in almost every particular if this had been 
so." 2 Both time and place and procedure are proof of this. But 
it was the expression of the mind and will of the Sanhedrists, 
the official leaders of the people, and their representatives. 
The death of Christ was predetermined. The capital sentence 
could only be executed by the Roman power. It was their 
work to establish a capital charge. The false witnesses contra- 
dicted one another. At last two, possibly among those who 
had suffered loss from the purifications of the Temple, arose 
and perverted the Lord's statement about destroying the 
Temple, yet without agreeing. And the Lord preserved a 
merciful silence, like the long-suffering voicelessness of God 
when His rights are trampled on, His honour outraged, His 
love scorned, by the devil born. The holy dignity of the 
Prisoner, and the confused contradictions of the witnesses, 

1 The other alternatives (Edersheim and others), to press the aorist, 
&7rk(rrei\ev (John xviii. 24), into a pluperfect, referring to verse 14, and to 
ignore the ovv (Hort, Tischendorf, Gebhardt, R. V.), or omit it with. 
Tregelles, is too violent. 

2 Edersheim, ii. 557 foil., for proofs. 



THE DIVINE SACRIFICE. 179 

drive Caiaphas to his last stake. He must put the question 
of all questions, under the most awful sanction possible, in the 
name of the living God : "Art Thou the Messiah, the Son of the 
living God ? " The two questions were rightly put in one. Many- 
would have accepted Jesus as a Messiah upon their own terms. 
But the whole of Jesus' Messianic claim was, and is, indivisible 
from His assertion of His Divinity. The answer to the ques- 
tion was as unmistakable as it was solemn. Question and 
answer still ring through the world, and leave the everlasting 
dilemma, Is, or is not, Jesus the Divine Christ ? Is He what 
He said He was ? Or was He a liar and blasphemer ? If the 
answer of Caiaphas be right, His death and execution were 
right. For us, apart from and in addition to other currents of 
evidence, " the moral and spiritual evidence is His own cha- 
racter, which intentionally overshadows all the rest, and it is 
inconceivable that He should have made a false claim." * 

The scene changes from palace to palace, from judge to 
judge. Whether Pilate occupied the palace of Herod at the 
north-western angle of the upper city, or the barracks of the 
castle at Antonia. ; is a question still in debate ; but the balance 
of opinion favours the former locality. It must have been 
about five or six in the morning that the Sanhedrists arrived at 
the gates of the Praetorium, and refused to enter in because 
they would be defiled by entering a heathen dwelling, and so 
be prevented from offering and eating the Chagzgah. 2 Here 
took place what St. John describes (xviii. 33-38, and St. Luke 
xxiii. 2) — the first formal civil charge against the Messiah, 
and their openly-expressed resolution to have Him put to 
death. Pilate was not unprepared for the encounter. He 
could not have been in total ignorance of so notorious a move- 
ment, and his own soldiers had been called out ; and he had 
the insight of Jewish experience of the unscrupulous Annas 
party. The message from his wife came at a later stage, but 
may have been the emphatic accent of a repeated warning. 
Certainly Pilate hesitated even in the face of so serious a 
charge as that of Jesus' aspiring to royalty. Nor could the 
influence of the Prisoner's demeanour, so unlike a criminal's, 
so gently fearless, so noble in transparent innocence and wan 

1 Bp. Temple, "The Relations between Religion and Science," p. 216. 

2 This view of (pay(o<nv to iraaya (John xviii. 28) of course follows upon 
that of regarding the Lord's Supper as the real Paschal supper. 



l8o JESUS CHRIST. 

dignity, have been wholly lost upon one who was Roman 
enough to know a man, and whom magisterial and Roman 
bias would have prepossessed in favour, not in disfavour, of an 
object of Rabbinical odium. Had he come to the issue with 
the cleaner hands and truer heart of a Cato or a Cicero, Pilate 
would have been steadier to face so unexpected and over- 
whelming a responsibility. But the Son of Man came un- 
awares. Temptations are apt to mask themselves under the 
guise of a surprise, which the ordinary discharge of daily duty 
would have forestalled or disarmed. And what shreds of 
rectitude or tenderness of honour or of heart were left to one 
whose official career had been one long murder, whose cruelty 
had been " unceasing and most vexatious " ? x Roman statecraft 
of the best was unable to fathom such a character and such a 
policy. A kingdom of truth, not of this world, was an intan- 
gible, unpractical idea to a man of the world, much more to 
such a man of such a world. It was a far-off Divine idea which 
a practical, business-like officer could not attach any workable 
meaning to. It never occurred even to cynical Pilate that 
there was delusion or imposture. Here was One whose every 
word and look breathed manly dignity, appealing tenderness, 
and reserved force. Here was no slavish cringing, no hot 
fanaticism, no stubborn defiance. Jesus already bore the 
marks of cowardly insult ; but no suspicion of a quailing spirit 
or a resentful temper lurked under the open grandeur of the 
Perfect Sufferer. While Pilate wavered, 

" Letting ' I dare not ' wait upon ' I would,' " 

the storm of accusation waxed louder and fiercer, and the man 
whose root-motive was selfishness dashed with expediency, with 
all the power of Rome at his back — 

"Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos," 

quailed before those who never turned his helpless Prisoner a 
hair's breadth, and caught at the word Galilee tossed up on the 
surging multitudinous roar. Let the Galilean go to the Galilean 
Tetrarch, and a troublesome case be got rid of, and a politic 
compliment paid to the hostile provincial potentate ! 

Another figure has seen afar off or has learnt in his hiding- 

1 Philo. 



THE DIVINE SACRIFICE. l8l 

place, what is coming to Him who had received the traitor's 
kiss. The pains of hell have gat hold of him. He would rid 
himself of the accursed wages. 

" His lust and greed 
Whom thou abettest thou dost make thine own, 
And nothing gett'st but wages of thy work 
To pay thy sin. What ! is't not shame on shame 
Thou puttest thine immortal soul to sale 
For profit of another ? . . . 
Oh soil of bad men's service . . . 
Oh curse of bad men's hire." l 

He would own to the high priests, unmoved as the rocky walls 
of the Temple, that he had betrayed innocent blood. But the 
repentance of Judas was a sorrow of this world, which worketh 
death. Away from the Temple, away from the holy city, 
away 

" Anywhere, anywhere out of the world ! " s 

In the old palace of the Asmonaeans Jesus confronted Herod 
and his men of war. Never did He break into his flippant 
volubility with a word. " Herod was provoked by the obstinate 
silence of the gentle Galilean. But not one stripe was laid 
upon His shoulders by the order of Antipas. . . . He had had 
enough of murdering prophets." 3 Arrayed in the mockery of 
gorgeous apparel, possibly purple, or a candidate's white toga v 
the Prisoner was remitted to Pilate ; and the Roman again 
discovers the piteous figure of Incarnate Suffering which no 
caricature could unking of royalty. 

Pilate has not yet succeeded in shaking off the impression 
made by his Prisoner's words and demeanour. The " august 
authority of righteousness " cannot have been unfelt by one 
trained in Roman law. He was not wholly un penetrated by 
" a secret worship of honour, truth, and might." 4 His con- 
science had been hardly used, but not destroyed. His repeated 
efforts are the measure of its mute force, and his unwonted 
scrupulosity a tribute to the moral ascendency of the humi- 
liated and insulted Prisoner. It would be difficult in any 

1 Sir H. Taylor, " Philip van Artevelde." 2 T. Hood. 

3 Bp. Alexander, " The Great Question," p. 174. 

4 Martineau, "A Study of Religion," i. 21. 



1 82 JESUS CHRIST. 

calculus of guilt to place a Pilate as low as a Judas or a 
Caiaphas. Our Lord Himself judicially differentiates them. 
Pilate was an indifferentist, Judas an apostate traitor, Caiaphas 
high priest to the devil. 

Pilate again endeavours to release Him after a special 
summons of the Sanhedrists and the populace. He tries 
another shift. But from one centre he can never move. His 
basal principle is self-servient expediency, and no power in 
heaven or earth can unseat it. He will not now unconditionally 
release a Prisoner whose innocence he admits as expressly as 
he knows the envy which moved His adversaries. He offers 
them an alternative. He will try and shift the responsibility to 
their shoulders. Bar-Abbas or Jesus ? The kingdom of truth 
was a visionary empire. To the kingdom of justice Pilate 
pronounces himself as strange. Nor were his effortless efforts 
without moral support. His wife's dream startled a conscience 
open to fear. A minority of the crowd desired the release of 
Jesus, but obduracy and hatred were the stronger power ; the 
voices of the high-priestly party prevailed. 

" Once more. If Pilate cannot move the Jews to a sense of 
justice (and how should he, when setting them an example of 
injustice?), or even to self-respect (and how should he, when 
neglecting to respect his own authority ?), he may yet move 
them, as he thinks, to pity. . . . He will fulfil half their wish ; 
he will execute part of their vengeance. He will torment Jesus, 
but stop short of destroying Him. ' The tender mercies of the 
wicked are cruel.' He bids Jesus to be scourged, and it is 
done. Torn, bleeding, crowned with thorns, in purple rags, 
amid scorn and shouting, Pilate brings Him forth. ' Behold 
the Man ! ' The sight awakens no compassion ; only a tenfold 
storm of wrath." 1 

But the varying details of the Divine tragedy call for larger 
and stronger colours than the few bare outlines possible here ; and 
we hurry on with hushed steps and penitential spirit to the last 
scene, leaving the majesty of the Gospel accounts undisturbed 
in their controlled reticence, pathetic in speech and silence, 
with the impress of Him at whose feet they are written. 

The record of the last scene of the Passion owes several dis- 
tinctive particulars to one who was, of part at least, an eye- 

1 Bp. Milman, " Love of the Atonement," where a most spiritual 
account of the Passion is to be found. Cf. Westcott, John, s.l. 



THE DIVINE SACRIFICE. 1 83 

witness and, so far as a man could be, a fellow-sufferer. St. 
John's account is first-hand. Along the Way of Sorrows to the 
place of execution outside the gate, like His own apostles x at 
Rome, nigh to the city, Jesus goes. Golgotha may have been 
rightly identified with the rounded knoll near Jeremiah's 
Grotto, just outside the present " Damascus gate." But the 
excavation of the newly-discovered wall must be completed 
before opinion can utter its last word. The knoll is higher 
than the sacred rock of the Temple. " A sort of amphitheatre 
is formed by the gentle slopes on the west ; and the whole 
population of the city might easily witness from the vicinity 
anything taking place on the top of the cliff. The knoll is just 
beside the main north road." 2 " The hill is now quite bare, 
with scanty grass covering its rocky soil." 3 It has been dis- 
covered to be the traditional place of stoning. And the proba- 
bility of the identification gains ground. It is generally agreed 
that it was the usual place of execution. And so Jesus identified 
Himself with criminals in the mystery of His representative 
sacrifice in the very place as well as mode of punishment. 

Around the Cross the world was grouped by representation. 
For at the Passover members of all nations, faiths, cultures, 
gathered. The Paschal Supper was over, and the Jews had 
leisure for a spectacle of momentous interest to all who had 
heard of the Messianic claims of Jesus. How many of the 
converts of Pentecost and after were actual spectators ; how 
many of the pitiful daughters of Jerusalem gathered round the 
stricken group of holy women ; how many children who cried 
Hosanna, but never Crucify ; how many devout disciples of 
the Baptist, or taught of them ; how many Gentiles convicted 
of righteousness like the centurion of the Cross ; how many 
priests unforgetful of type and shadow, of sacrifice and pro- 
phesy, and specially impressed with the rending of the Temple 
Veil ; how many awestruck by the physical wonders to a sense of 
the supersensible and the eternal Power ; how many, in short, 
the Son of Man lifted up began to draw to Himself, and pre- 
pare for the victorious ingress of the Spirit, and His own in- 
visible return — is written only in the archives of the angels and 
the spiritual histories of the conquering travail of Christ. 

1 St. Peter and St. Paul. 

a "Survey" ; and Henderson, " Palestine," p. 164. 

3 " Cruise of the Bacchante^ ii. 586. • 



184 JESUS CHRIST. 

Two groups stand out from the Cross with intense vividness 
of contrast ; the heart of the Messianic and the heart of the 
anti-Messianic parties ; the children of light fellow-suffering, 
the children of darkness rejoicing. The mother with the sword 
passing through her heart in incomparable anguish, the beloved 
apostle, the holy women. And within their sight and hearing 
and His the still-scoffing, evilly-rejoicing Caiaphas and Annas 
party, the elect of the Wicked One. It was, and is, the eternal 
touchstone ; the rock of faith or of offence, where the waves of 
good and evil meet in eternal conflict. 

The Seven sacred Words from the Cross are each and 
altogether an organic whole. The intercession of the High 
Priest, the royal pardon and the absolution of the High Priest, 
the filial love of the Son of Mary, the brotherly love of the 
Friend of friends, the bodily and spiritual thirst of the Son of 
Man, the forsakenness of the atoning Sin-bearer, the finished 
work of the Divine Apostle and Victim and Mediator, the final 
farewell when the human soul passed on its journey to the Father's 
hands, and the weary Head bowed itself on His Father's bosom. 
Alike of each word, and of every word and work of Christ it 
may be equally said, " It is finished." For nothing broken, frag- 
mentary, incomplete, in the wrong time, place, or manner, was 
thought, said, or done by the Perfect Man. Nothing of Mes- 
sianic fore-ideals had been unfulfilled by the Messiah. Every- 
thing was timed to a second, and finished to a hair. And 
round the broken fragments of broken hours, broken lives, 
broken thoughts, broken prayers, in Nature and in human 
nature, is wrapped the blood-stained mantle of the perfect 
righteousness of the High Priest of both. 

When we ask the wherefore of so stupendous a Sacrifice, 
gleams of light break from the fountains of revealed truth, but 
partial only. We know that the Cross revealed God's love, 
God's righteousness, God's holiness, God's truth. It was man's 
necessity, man's need, that drew the Son, a willing Sacrifice for 
life and death, from the bosom of the Father. God was in 
Christ reconciling the world to Himself. " The human blood 
of the Eternal God was the ransom paid to God for our 
eternal redemption from the curse of the Law and from the 
wrath of God, and from the claims of Satan, and from the power 
of sin." J "How His life and death and resurrection accomplished 
1 .Canon Evans on i Cor. vi. 20. 



THE DIVINE SACRIFICE. 185 

our salvation, what share they each or all together had in 
making Him our propitiation they (the creeds) tell us not. 
They teach an Atonement ; but theory of Atonement, God be 
praised, they give us none." ■ 

Looking upon the Atonement in its practical result as a 
spiritual dynamic, it " stamps upon the mind with a power, with 
which no other fact could, the righteousness of God. To trifle 
with a Being who has demanded this Sacrifice is madness, and 
hence arises awe : but from the acceptance of the Atonement 
arises the love of God." 2 The love and fear of God actuated 
men before the Atonement in Israel. The fear of God was the 
supreme practical religious virtue of the old Covenant. The 
righteous man feared God. The love of God breathes in the 
Psalter, and in the highest visions of the Prophets breaks 
through the stormy voices like the clear shining after rain with 
the promise of brighter morrows. And the fear of God or 
Gods is the dominant religions motive of non- Christian religions. 
The Atonement has deepened the fear of God, and set it upon 
a more intelligible basis ; the love of God the thought of the 
Crucified has not only made an infinitely real conception, but 
inconceivably the strongest active principle and inspiring 
motive of all Christian life Godward and manward. " For if 
when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death 
of His Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by 
His life" (Rom. v. 10.). " From that event dates his 3 adoption, 
his glorious liberty, the law of the Spirit of life, the witness of 
that Spirit in his own heart, the expectation of that glory which 
shall be revealed in him, and the gift of eternal life." 4 From that 

" Fountain filled with blood " 

have flowed the countless streams of Christian self-devotion ; 
from that Sacrifice all other sacrifices have derived their moral 
strength and substance ; from that blood-shedding "all sacra- 
ments, all prayers, all authoritative words of pardon, all sancti- 
fying works of mercy, draw whatever they have of power or 
virtue." 4 To suppose that all that has been consciously or 

1 Bp. Magee, "The Atonement," p. in. 

8 Dr. Mozley, Bampton Lecture, vii. p. 139. 3 I.e., man's. 

4 Dr. Liddon, " University Sermons, " i. p. 246, "The Divine Victim.'' 



1 86 JESUS CHRIST. 

unconsciously, directly or indirectly, based upon and sanctioned 
by the Atonement is based upon and sanctioned by a delusion 
which would be criminal, or a " legend of pity " which would 
be fictitious, is an outrage to the soberest human reason, the 
deepest human piety, the tenderest human love, and the 
strongest human lives. 

" Upon the ground 
That in the story had been found 
Too much love ! How could God love so?'* * 

1 R. Browning, "Easter Day." 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE DIVINE SABBATH. 

" Where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." 

Tennyson, from Job iii. 17. 

The marred Body — The Soul free among the dead — Easter Eve. 

Evening was approaching, and with it the Sabbath and the 
second Paschal Day. St. John had escorted the mother, and 
perhaps the other women with her, to his own home, and 
returned in time to see the dead Body of the Lord still hanging 
and the soldier drive his spear deep into His side. Suffering 
is the best teacher. Latent or recognized truths flash into 
light and burning reality. Then and there he saw the Messianic 
fulfilments of type and prophecy in the pierced form with bone 
unbroken. Then and there Joseph of Arimathea was lifted 
from a secret to an open disciple ; Nicodemus from a night 
seeker to a day-believer. Reverently the two Sanhedrists bear 
the marred Body to Joseph's new rock-hewn tomb hard by, and 
lay it in one of the niches (Kukhin). Many of these have been 
excavated and described, and it is yet possible x that the very 
one which sheltered the Body may be found. Present opinion 
is divided between the Holy Sepulchre and a spot near the 
Damascus Gate. The opening of the whole course of the newly- 
discovered wall will throw light on the problem, and if the wall 
run outside the present " Holy Sepulchre " negative the tra- 
dition which gives it its name, if within, confirm it. There 
was the Body of the Divine Sufferer left in lonely repose, guarded 
by a great sealed stone, and apparently all through the Sabbath 
day of rest by a detachment of Roman soldiers. 
1 " Twenty-One Years," p. 62 foil. 



1 88 JESUS CHRIST. 

And whither, happy Soul, free among the dead didst Thou 
go ? What parts of Sheol didst Thou traverse in triumph ? 
Were the Antediluvians the only hearers of Thy proclama- 
tion ? Or rather not all the dead ? x Did not Moses and Elias 
who had been with Thee at the Mountain of Transfiguration to 
speak of Thine Exodus now greet Thee ; and Abraham, and ii 
Abraham, Abraham's children, exult to see Thy day ? Thou 
alone knowest, who didst descend into Hades and hast the 
keys of death and of Hades ! 

Silence and darkness fell around the Holy Sepulchre. Silence 
and darkness lay over the hearts and homes of the mourners in 
Zion. But the love, the force, the work, the truth lost to the 
earth was gained by the other world. And those who were 
asleep in death and had laid them down to the long rest in their 
hope full of immortality had not gone to utter destruction, but 
were in the hand of God. They were in peace, and to them 
the Peacemaker came. So the energies of human love and 
blessed endeavour are not spent shot, but transmutable to 
" unimpeded activities," 2 beatifying and beatified, in the brighter 
and more populous half of the one kingdom. Such is the 
teaching of the physical analogies. Energy passes off to other 
transmigrations. Nothing is lost. The departed soul enriches 
another kingdom, and increases its working power — the king- 
dom of light or the princedom of darkness. 

Nor has the ni^ht of Easter Eve been unremembered by 
Christian devotion. It has been a night vocal with praise. It 
has been the night celebrated by such accents of adoration as 
these : — 

" It is very meet and right, with all powers of heart and mind, 
and with the service of the lips, to praise the invisible God, 
the Father Almighty, and His only begotten Son our Lord 
Jesus Christ, who paid the debt of Adam for us to the Eternal 
Father, and effaced the bond of the ancient guilt by the blood 
poured forth in loving-kindness. For this is the Paschal 
festival in which that true Lamb is slain, and the door-posts 
hallowed by His blood : in which first Thou didst bring our 
fathers, the children of Israel, out of Egypt, and madest them 
to pass over the Red Sea dry-shod. This, then, is the night 
which now throughout the world restores to grace and unites 

1 i Peter iv. 6 (F. C. Cook, s. /.). 2 Aristotle, N.Eth., vii., xii. 3, &c. 



THE DIVINE SABBATH. 1 89 

to holiness believers in Christ, separated from worldly vices and 
from the gloom of sin. This is the night in which Christ broke 
the bonds of death, and ascended a Conqueror from the grave. 
For to be born had been no blessing to us, unless we could 
have been redeemed. O the wondrous condescension of Thy 
loving-kindness towards us ! O the inestimable tenderness of 
Thy love ! To redeem the servant, Thou gavest up the Son. 
This holy night, then, puts to flight offences, washes away sins, 
and restores innocence to the fallen, and joyousness to the sad. 
O truly blessed night, which spoiled the Egyptians and enriched 
the Hebrews — the night in which heaven and earth are recon- 
ciled ! We pray Thee therefore, O Lord, that Thou wouldest 
preserve Thy servants in the peaceful enjoyment of this Easter 
happiness, through Jesus Christ our Lord." x 

That night has been a "watch night " to many hearts who 
look for the uprising of the Resurrection morning, and listen for 
the trumpet blast of the Resurrection Angel. 

1 Ancient Gregorian prayer preserved in Bright's "Ancient Collects," 
p. 52. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS. 

" Thou know'st He died not for Himself, nor for Himself arose : 
Millions of souls were in His heart, and thee for one He chose. 
Upon the palms of His pierc'd hand engraven was thy name, 
He for thy cleansing had prepar'd His water and His flame." 

J. Keble, " Lyra Innocentium," " Easter Day." 

Trjv Z,m)(p6pov avaaramv. 

Chrysostom in Princip., Act vi. 

The Resurrection — Magdalena dolorosa — The Resurrection unexpected, a 
Divine must be — Emmaus — Appearance to the eleven apostles and 
other brethren — Differentiation of offices — Doubter Thomas — Messianic 
critical difficulties — Celsus's objection — Vision hypothesis — Galilee 
again — The fishers on the sea again — All authority — Undetailed ap- 
pearances — The great Forty Days — Divine organization — Development 
of order — Development of faith — Continuity, both of soul and body — 
The four distinct Evangelic reports. 

The darkness, but not the silence, was burst when the angel 
of the Resurrection came to the Holy Sepulchre. God's 
mightiest physical agencies are silent. 

" There is neither speech nor lauguage " (Psa. xix. 3) 

and His spiritual activities are for the most part inaudible here 
as the songs of angels. 

One human being was the meeting-point between heaven 
and earth, the instrument of the Incarnation. No human eye 
witnessed the Resurrection. Out of the guilty sleeping city stole 
a little band of women like shadows. By the time Mary 
Magdalene, "last at the cross, firs at the grave," had reached 



THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS. 191 

the rock-hewn sepulchre, the light had flashed over the eastern 
sea, and the Lord had risen. She hurries back from the un- 
tenanted tomb, and her companions reach the spot and see an 
angel. "In their affliction they will seek Me .early" (Hosea 
v. 15). St. Luke may be describing another and later party 
which sees two angels. The two apostles arrive and see the 
threefold sign, the stone removed, the sepulchre empty, the 
grave clothes in order. The writer records his eye-witness and 
his belief. His was the first act of faith. It was a germ which 
bore the fruit of knowledge. To know x was the end of the 
Johannine creed. 

After the running apostles Mary Magdalene returns untold 
or unconvinced. The angels comfort her not. Only when He 
calls her by name does the penitent recognize her Saviour. The 
first to see the risen Lord is the most blessed of them that 
mourn. Soon after, as it seems, He goes forward to meet the 
returning company of women and reveals Himself, and charges 
the brethren to go to Galilee and await Him. 

Several points call for attention. Not one soul expected the 
Resurrection. The fact is not creditable to the disciples, and 
certainly prejudices in favour of the honesty of the report. 
Their Messianic belief was derived from two sources, their 
Jewish preconceptions and Christ's teaching. Their Jewish 
preconceptions were partly Scriptural, partly traditional. In 
the Old Testament they had not noticed the types and figures 
or direct prophecies, which Christian light afterwards illumi- 
nated. Extra Scriptural Jewish thought less increased than 
diminished any belief in a Messianic resurrection. The notion 
of a pre-existent Messiah was vague and colourless at the best, 
and such as it was, supplied no basis whatever for belief in a 
return to life. 

It is difficult to see how any honest mind can shake off the 
impression of transparent veracity and artless truth to nature 
in the fourfold narrative. The faith of the disciples was at its 
lowest pressure. The grief, the surprise, the indignation, the 
physical pain, which overwhelmed them on Friday stifled hope. 
The Lord's promises were forgotten, crowded out by the stress 
and storm of present affliction. Great grief has no past or 
future. It is all present, overwhelming, catastrophic. The 
sufferings and death of Christ were the greatest trial the dis- 
1 Cf. i. Ep. passim. 



I92 JESUS CHRIST. 

ciples ever underwent. Not only did they suffer with Him, 
drink His cup of shame and ignominy, sorrow in His sorrow, 
not only were they baffled, beaten, defeated as a party, di- 
spirited, disintegrated as a body, not only were they wounded 
in their tenderest affections, but their Messianic beliefs and 
hopes were assailed at all points. The more heartily they 
believed in His Messiahship the more difficult and disap- 
pointing did the end seem. The further they had reached in 
acceptance of the mystery of His Divinity, the greater did the 
mystery of His suffering humanity seem. That their Messianic 
prejudices had not died the long death of mistake is abund- 
antly apparent. The shock to their faith might have been 
overwhelming had the Lord not risen again. The Resurrection 
was the final and conclusive, but not the only, proof of His 
Divinity. By it He vindicated His claims, fulfilled His 
promises, verified His words. Without it His life might have 
been regarded as a magnificent dream, and an unparalleled 
venture of heroism. With it His life descends into the regions 
of sound reason and verifiable fact. The Resurrection " should 
not perhaps have been necessary. The loftiness and purity and 
humility of His character should have been enough to prove 
that He only spoke what was true." 1 But there are many aspects 
to the Divine " must be." Among the many human necessities 
of the Divine " must " here was one. 2 The moral and spiritual 
resurrection followed naturally and inevitably. After the shock 
the recovery was instantaneous and absolute. Henceforward 
Christian conviction stood upon unassailable ground, and trans- 
mits itself by its own inherent force. The evidential power of 
the Resurrection stands its ground. Upon it is built the whole 
historic fabric of Christianity. Invalidate that evidence and 
Christianity is dead. 

All the appearances are not recorded in detail. There was 
one revelation incidentally mentioned by St. Luke, and at an 
earlier date by St. Paul (i Cor. xv. 5), which a legendary writer 
could not have failed to embellish. He appeared to Cephas. 
This was before the evening appearance to the Twelve. Who 

1 Stanton, p. 253. 

2 Cf. St. Bernard on the Atonement, in his wonderful letter, "Deerroribus 
Abaelardi," Tom. ii., Opusc. xi., Ep. cxc., ch. viii., § 19. " Respondemus ; 
Necessitas nostra fuit, et necessitas dura sedentibus in tenebris et umbra 
mortis. Opus aeque nostrum, et Dei nostri, et sanctorum Ang-'' Drum," &c 



THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS. 193 

would not be glad to know what words, or speaking silence, 
passed at that interview ? 

The Lord's self-manifestation to the two disciples on the way 
to Emmaus is related with some minuteness by St. Luke. He 
would "travel with the travellers," to adopt the words of 
ancient liturgical prayer. Of the two disciples one was Cleopas, 
the other may have been the narrator himself. Either they 
had not heard at first hand, or had not fully credited, the 
tidings that the Lord had really and indeed risen. Their state 
of downcast ignorance and disappointed half hope evidently 
represented the mental and spiritual condition of many of the 
faithful in Jerusalem, as the first undulations of the report 
reached them, and required the confirmation of the Lord's 
Person to carry conviction. 

St. Matthew, the writer of the Jewish Gospel, naturally gives 
the Jewish version of the Resurrection. It was the authorized 
anti- Messianic version ; he may have often heard and answered 
it by the appeal to personal testimony. The high priests and 
elders bribed the soldiers to say that the disciples came and stole 
the Body away while the guards slept. It is surprising that 
any revivals of this story could have found credit since ; it 
would seem a far more reasonable hypothesis altogether to deny 
the fact by discrediting the witnesses. But the difficulties of 
unbelief are greater than those of belief, and labour under the 
superincumbent addition of the contradictory theories, clashing 
hypotheses, and changing no-creeds, which confront the un- 
changing and unchangeable faith of Christendom in a risen and 
living Christ. 

On the afternoon of the Resurrection another appearance of 
the Lord took place. Much interesting discussion of the site 
of Emmaus has taken place in the columns of the Quarterly 
Journal of the Palestine Exploration Society, and various 
identifications have been suggested. St. Luke's careful note of 
its distance, sixty furlongs, negatives the identification with 
the Emmaus, afterwards Nicopolis, now Am was, which is one 
hundred and sixty furlongs distant. The alternative lies be- 
tween three : (1) Khurbet el Khamasa, " the ruins of Khamasa/' 
"from the Arabic Hammath." It lies close beside "one of 
the ancient roads leading from the capital to the plain near 
Beit Jibrin," I and is distant eight miles from the capital. 
1 " Survey," iii. 36 and foil. 
14 



194 JESUS CHRIST. 

Ancient rock-cut sepulchres and a causeway mark the site as 
being of considerable antiquity, and the vicinity is still remark- 
able for its fine supply of spring water. 1 But springs do not 
necessarily suggest the "hot spring" (Khammath) or " medici- 
nal spring," implied by its name ; and the identification is open 
to this objection. (2) El Kubeibeh, the Crusaders' Emmaus, is 
situate sixty stades north-west of Jerusalem. This site is 
supported by the proximity of Kolonieh, i.e., Colonia. As 
Josephus mentions the plantation of a military colony of eight 
hnndred Roman soldiers at Emmaus, the retention of the name, 
in addition to that of El Hummam hard by, constitutes a strong 
claim. The still-existing ruin Beit-Mizza, near Kolonieh, may 
represent the " Ammaous " of Josephus ("Amosa" of the 
Septuagint ; Ham-M6tsah, Hebrew), "and be the southernmost 
trace 2 of the old name " 3 of the district, as Josephus calls it. 
(3) Urtas, 4 in the valley of Etham, near Bethlehem, a possible 
corruption of Hortus. At present the second alternative seems 
the one which combines most of the lines of identification. 

The conversation of Christ with the two bears all the internal 
marks of genuineness. It is natural, it is simple. It is just a 
Bible lesson which the unknown Stranger gives. They ought 
not to have required the detailed explanations of prophecy. 
They ought to have remembered, or others ought to have 
remembered and reminded them, of the Lord's own repeated 
prediction of His Passion and His Resurrection. As the 
Passion had taken place, they should have been the readier to 
believe in the Resurrection. But Scripture does not idealize 
its characters like ancient myths or modern novels. They had 
to unlearn so much before they knew their own Scriptures. 
" Even in the case of the few who believed in Him, faith was 
not the effect of the proof from prophecy. Believers did not 
first study the prophecies, and then come to Jesus as disciples ; 
they first came to Jesus, and then learnt how to interpret 
the prophecies. The proper interpretation of prophecy was 
not the cause, but the effect, of their faith." 5 What was 
true of prophecy in its strict sense was true of the underlying 
prophetic and priestly element of all the old Covenant revela- 

1 " Twenty-one Years," p. 120. 2 Being only four miles off. 

3 Rev. R. F. Hutchinson and Rev. A. Henderson. 

* Mrs. Finn and Rev. P. Mearns. 

s Dr. A. B. Bruce, "The Chief End of Revelation," p. 257. 



THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS. 195 

tion in its Messianic relation. The kingly element had been 
better understood, but distorted and secularized. The explana- 
tions given by St. Peter notably, and the other disciples, of 
which the Acts gives us but bare outlines, and suggestive 
specimens, were doubtless grounded upon the Bible lessons 
they had personally received from Christ, before and, more 
especially, after the Resurrection, when His whole earthly 
time was taken up, not in mighty works, not in preaching to 
the masses, but in instruction of His believers in the things 
pertaining to the kingdom of God. Before the Resurrection 
the disciples had but imperfect appreciation of the Old Testa- 
ment. In the intellectual and spiritual resurrection which 
followed upon that of the Messiah the whole of God's dealings 
became illuminated ; and the older inspiration was Targumed 
in the fulness of its Messianic wealth. 

Such re-revelations of old truths renewed, but not under- 
stood till a living voice, or a new inspiration, had interpreted, 
enforced, and cleared up, is not without many parallels in the 
history of the Church and of the individual. The struggles of 
the first four Christian centuries involved a constant return to 
old truths, re-reading of familiar but unperceived or unformu- 
lated doctrines. And in the spiritual histories of the aged 
there is a tendency to revert to the familiar hymns or texts 
learned in childhood, little understood at the time, but lying 
hid and bursting into life and flower, just when many anchors 
are slipping away. St. John himself, in his old age, as we 
read his latest utterances, his Epistles, seems to be clinging 
round a few old truths, and old formulse. They have become 
fuller and fuller of meaning and light, like songs of childhood 
charged with the sweetest memories, or treasured letters 
embalming the most deeply-rooted fibres of the personal life. 

It is remarkable that the eyes of the disciples were first 
spiritually opened when the Lord sat with them at supper and 
took the bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave it to 
them. 

" He blessed the bread, but vanished at the word, 
And left them both exclaiming, ' 'Twas the Lord.' " z 

The act of Christ was quasi-sacramental. He did what He 
1 Cowper, " Conversation." 



196 JESUS CHRIST. 

had done at the Last Supper, but whether He gave the cup or 
not, we are not told. Perhaps the supper then stands midway 
between a communion and an agape. Though the two dis- 
ciples were not present at the Last Supper, they may have been 
familiar with its details, and may have been among the five 
thousand or the four thousand. Or they may have been like 
those in whom ignorance is no bar to the benefits of the Holy 
Communion, where spiritual preparedness exists. Certainly 
at this moment of, on the lowest ground, social communion their 
eyes were opened to the Light. And they are soon on their 
way back to Jerusalem with the glad tidings. 

The same night, perhaps about 8 P.M., when the two had 
returned with their joyful evidence to the eleven apostles and 
others gathered with them, He Himself stood in their midst. 
He had appeared to. individual believers ; He now appeared to 
the Church. Resurrection had not been a mere revival. His 
body had "put on" new conditions and higher powers. It 
was now a spiritual body, entirely indifferent to material 
limitations. And so the way was paved for the conception of a 
heavenly bodily organism fitted to be the perfected instrument 
and organ of a glorified spirit ; and for the presence of His 
own body " after an heavenly and spiritual manner." * 

The passing of the real substantial body through the closed 
door was both an evidence and a prophecy. After giving the 
senses of sight, and hearing, and feeling independent evidence 
of His continued humanity and unbroken identity, He now 
formally renewed and ratified the commission they had before 
received. But it was a grant of enlarged powers upon the 
basis of His increased authority. It was the grant of a King 
distributing His functions of government according to His 
royal will and power with primary reference to the spiritual 
domain. He gave them mission identical with His own. To 
send in itself carries with it no powers. But authority in 
addition was delegated. And under the outward sign of breath- 
ing the inward grace of the Holy Spirit was imparted for the 
discharge of apostolic and ecclesiastical functions, with 
especial reference to the remitting and retaining of sins. 
Christ was, and is, the Minister and High Priest of the Church. 
All offices are actually, as well as ideally, contained in His 
Person. Out of His fulness He differentiates selected offices, 
1 Art. xxviii. of the Thirty-nine Articles. 



THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS. 1 97 

functions, powers, gifts. The Church as a whole and the 
apostles most nearly were to represent Him in the world, His 
life, work, authority ; not to speak now of His mind and 
character. 

There was one absentee upon this occasion. The doubting 
Thomas peremptorily demanded rigorous first-hand, sensible 
experience of the reality of the Resurrection. All appear to 
have doubted in differing degrees. Doubt was characteristic 
of the most unhopeful but straightforward apostle. What 
were the especial difficulties of his faith we are not told. Pro- 
bably they were in the main physical, for physical proof 
satisfied his doubt. And the Messianic hope may have taken 
more definitely local and national outlines with him. Thomas 
was the impersonation of the doubt of the dull, matter-of-fact 
character which sinks under the pressure of overpowering 
environments, but does not cease to love. Thomas wanted 
imagination ; he could see only straight before him ; he wanted 
faith in others because he wanted faith in God. And so, though 
he honestly loved, 

" Doubt, a blank twilight of the heart, which mars 
All sweetest colours in its dimness same ; 
A soul-mist, through whose rifts familiar stars 
Beholding we misname," * 

clouded his mind, as it shook, if we mistook not, even the 
strong grip and single eye of the prophet in Machserus. 

Our Lord's reproaches (Mark xvi. 14 ; Luke xxiv. 25) upon 
this and other occasions would not have contained that element 
of bitterness which usually characterizes deserved, or un- 
deserved, human reproachfulness. They were the chidings 
of them that " smite me friendly." And we know not how 
much His manner and tone sweetened and solemnized the lash 
which revealed the moral source, the hard-heartedness and 
slow-heartedness, of their intellectual sins. But what of those 
whose faith and love retreat in company at quick march ? 
What of those who seal their eyes and heart to evidence 
within and without, who create difficulties, instead of waiting 
their approach, with an increasing appetite for negatives, and 
an unchecked passion to hear all that can be said against the 

1 Jean Ingelow, " Honours." 



I98 JESUS CHRIST. 

old story, who " blaspheme dignities," or halve and distort in 
order to scorn, 

" E'en those, Thine own in earlier youth, 
Now. coldly asking, ' What is truth ? ' 
Who spurn the way their fathers trod, 
Forego their faith, and lose their God" ? x 

Are such Thomases ? 

A week passed. The news must have spread and brought 
Thomas to the weekly gathering, which anticipated evidently 
another appearance when the day of Resurrection came 
again. Here is the instinctive and unconscious consecra- 
tion of the Lord's Day of subsequent observance. Again 
the Lord appears. Thomas receives the verification he had 
desired, and the "ninth beatitude" is pronounced upon those 
who had not seen the "atoning wounds," but would believe. 
The falling Church had now become the standing Church. The 
spiritual and intellectual victory of the Resurrection was now 
complete. The rising or falling of the Churches to the end 
depends upon their response to the power of the Resurrection, 
and their increasing or decreasing in the life of the Risen. 

Contrary to their own preconceived opinions of the Jewish 
Messiah, contrary to their own prejudices, unbroken by the 
repeated waves of surprise in Christ's conduct, character, and 
teaching, the disciples believed in the return of Jesus to life, 
and that life in their belief belonged to a wholly higher order of 
being. And what was the next step taken in the progress of 
their conviction ? They believed in the return to a pre-existent 
earthly life, followed by a return to a pre-existent heavenly life. 
They believed that Jesus was alive in heaven at the right hand 
of God, in the plentitude of power and glory, and yet in imme- 
diate relation and minute contact with His earthly friends, 
officers, representatives. The excited hallucinations of enthu- 
siasts might have restored to an imaginary life a beloved form. 
But how could the fondest flights of fancy appeal to His pre- 
sence above by His works beneath ? How could they deepen 
and widen and strengthen their convictions with the lapse of 
time ? And in the face of hostile criticism and sleepless perse- 
cution maintain unshaken their own conviction of His present, 
energizing power, and afford sufficient proof of the same 
1 Dr. Bright. 



THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS. 1 99 

to others to gradually convince many of their own people, in- 
cluding a leading opponent, and many in different places, and 
of divers tongues, cultures, environments, beliefs, that their faith 
was not an open question, not a religious novelty, or a tenable 
hypothesis, or a fanciful superstition, but an absolutely peremp- 
tory fact ? It is unhistoric, unscientific to isolate the evidence 
of the Resurrection to its bare context. The whole line of result 
must be measured from the conviction of the first convinced 
woman of tears to the still throbbing life and hope of Christen- 
dom. It must be remembered that the scientific difficulties of 
belief were as serious, if not as clearly defined, for them as for 
us. In addition to that they had greater difficulties of their own. 
The rejection of the Messiah by all the influence and authority 
of Jerusalem ; His unresisting submission to the Gentile powers ; 
the defection of His nearest disciples ; the contradiction to 
all their hopes and Messianic preconceptions — and all coming 
when the crown of popular favour had been set upon His brow 
by the Messianic exultation on the Day of Palms. The reaction 
to faith required a tremendous impetus. The recoil was by 
degrees. 

Jewish preconception had so far from created a bias in favour 
of a risen Messiah, that it increased the difficulty of belief. 
The notion of a pre-existent Messiah z was vague and colourless 
at the best, and even where it existed failed to suggest a resur- 
rection. The only basis of faith was derivable from the predic- 
tions of Jesus Himself. The Old Testament itself contained 
the truth. But it was hidden and unsuspected. Christ's 
definite promise was forgotten. His words would rise again. 
They had died and been buried. The change in the disciples' 
life, outward and inward, in their aggressive militancy, in their 
power of conviction and producing conviction, is absolutely un- 
intelligible, unless an adequate cause be found. That cause — 
the resurrection of the Master — carried with it the resurrection 
of their hearts and lives, of their convictions and powers. 

From Celsus onwards the objection has been raised that 
Christ did not appear to any but believers. But the time for 
evidential miracles was past. Nor were miracles ever wrought 
by Christ without obedience to law. That law was God's will 
and character on the one side, with which He was in constant 
touch ; human spiritual affinity on the other. The universal 
1 Cf. Stanton, p. 130 f. 



200 JESUS CHRIST. 

vindication of His claims before believers and unbelievers is 
held in reserve by the Father. 

There was assuredly a judicial element in His withdrawal. 1 
It was a pcsna damni. Was there not here a touch of mercy 
— lest they should sin too awfully against the light ? " If a man 
love Me I will manifest Myself to him." But where was the 
promise of manifestation to those who loved Him not ? Love 
opens God's heart as well as man's. And where the initial at 
once and final gift of love was wanting, what good could mere 
intellectual coercion have done ? 

" Had Jesus showed Himself not to disciples only, witnesses 
chosen before of God, but to all the people — to the Pharisees 
and Sadducees, to the judges who condemned Him, and to the 
soldiers who nailed Him to the cross," it would have been, as has 
been well said, 2 " to renew His Passion." "That Passion con- 
sisted in other things besides sufferings deliberately inflicted 
on Him by the world. Mere intercourse with the world caused 
no small part of it. To have His aims misunderstood, His 
motives misinterpreted, His revelations scorned ; to have the 
very works in which the glory of His Father most conspicuously 
appeared traced to a league on His part with Beelzebub : to find 
that much of the Divine seed sown by Him fell upon the hard 
wayside, and was taken away before it could penetrate the 
heart ; to come into hourly contact with ignorance instead of 
knowledge, selfishness instead of love, oppression instead of 
justice, formalism instead of piety, truth perverted by its 
appointed guardians, His Father's house turned into a den of 
thieves, the wretched denied consolation, man living without 
God and dying without hope — all this was suffering and sorrow ; 
it was His burden and His cup of woe. No approach even to a 
fresh experience of a like kind was possible after the burden had 
been borne and the cup drained to the dregs. From the very 
nature of the case, the risen Lord could come in contact only 
with disciples — with those in whom, instead of finding cause for 
a renewal of His pain, He might ' see of the travail of His soul 
and be satisfied.' If His resurrection was the beginning of His 
glory, it would have been a reversal of the whole plan of our 
redemption, a confounding of the different steps of the economy 

1 Cf. Tert. Apol. 21, " ne impii errore liberarentur." 

2 Prof. Milligan, "The Resurrection of our Lord,'' p. 33. 



THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS. 201 

of grace, had He ' after His passion' presented Himself alive 
to any but disciples." 

Negative criticism still has to content itself with the vision 
hypothesis. It shatters itself historically upon the evidence of 
the undisputed epistles of St. Paul. Morally and psychologi- 
cally it totally fails to account for the rapid, decided, and per- 
manent moral and spiritual resurrection of the believers, and 
the present power and working of the Church of Jesus. If the 
Resurrection were a visionary hallucination, the whole of Chris- 
tian devotion and life rests upon the baseless fabric of a vision ; 
and a vast stream of moral and spiritual energy flows from an 
inanimate object of worship. A delirium which has flooded the 
world with seas of prayer, crowded it with churches, girdled it 
with armies of workers in every field of human activity, leaves 
the world more insane every day ! So vast an effect requires 
an adequate cause, and that cause is pronounced to be a dream 
" of the feverish moods of evening ! " x 

It does not seem difficult to follow the Lord's reasons for 
sending the disciples into Galilee, which to negative criticism 
has been suggestive of suspicion. Galilee was the centre of the 
faith. The apostles were Galileans. Old associations would be 
renewed. Old ties riveted. In sight of the old places, on the 
ground redolent of word and deed and a thousand minutiae 
of tones and looks, the old truths would come home with 
gathered interest. The continuity of the pre-Resurrection and 
post-Resurrection teaching would be shown to be as consistent 
as the continuity of the pre- and post-Resurrection life. Scenes 
of home affections, consecrated and doubly endeared, or freely 
surrendered, scenes of spiritual birth and conversion, times and 
places which were landmarks to be unforgotten in heaven, 
would reinvest the old teaching, and connect it with the new, in 
a network of hallowed environment. 

In Galilee the sentiment of attachment, the affection of per- 
sonal loyalty, gained the accumulated and organized authority 
of past association. " It is undeniable that, taken in its widest 
acceptation, the feeling of the community is the sole source of 
political power." 2 Feeling, as a source of moral, spiritual, and 
social power in the Christian body, would be invigorated and 

1 Keim, vi. 345, though he disclaims in words adopting the vision 
theory. 

2 Herbert Spencer, " Political Institutions," p. 327. 



202 JESUS CHRIST. 

refreshed. The resurrection both of emotion and of intellect 
would be completed where eyes and ears told a thousand unfor- 
gotten tales of the Master's past works and words. Galilee was 
the real home, the dear home, both of the Master and of His 
disciples ; and the resurrection of all Christian home life which 
began in the Incarnation was now perfected. And with the 
love of home in their hearts His teachers would go forth to 
bring all families into one, and show them the way to the Home 
of homes. 

The home feeling would cling around the remembered form 
of the beloved Master, and all of His, when He had left them 
for the silence. 

The first Galilean scene is a prose idyll. They are in the 
thick of the old work, just as if nothing had occurred to break 
it off, and the three last years had been a dream. With the 
three fishers of the lake in the old place are Galilean Nathanael 
and Thomas and two disciples — a company forming the mystic 
number seven. They had fished all the night and had caught 
nothing. Parting the fresh morning air like a cheery good 
morning came the hail from the Stranger on the shore, 
" Cast the net on the right side of the ship and ye shall find." 
The successful haul was a speaking sign. Love is quick of 
memory and recognition. It is the beloved apostle who at once 
understands, and characteristically says to Peter, " It is the 
Lord !" It is Peter who characteristically springs into the sea, 
respectfully putting on his fisher s coat, to swim or wade the 
hundred yards to His Master's feet. 

The dragging in of the loaded net follows ; and the exact 
counting of the fish. Considering the importance of numerical 
combinations in Scripture the symbolical interpretation of the 
number, supported as it is by names so weighty as Augustine, 
and so devout as Isaac Williams, claims a respectful hearing. 
The meal upon the shore is irresistibly suggestive of prophetic 
import. The Rabbinical and extra-canonical pictures of Mes- 
sianic banquets under spiritualized applications find some 
scriptural countenance, and the figures, or whatever the truths 
that underlie them be, of eating and drinking in the kingdom, 
recur in the Apocalypse of St. John. 

After the meal follows the memorable dialogue with the son 
of John. He had been reinstated with the others in office. He 
is now formally reinstated in confidence before himself and his 
fellows. 



THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS. 203 

" He can forgive, we never can forget." His own future up- 
lifting on the martyr's cross is shadowed forth. Such a touching 
exhibition of unbroken loyalty to His friends, such a more than 
redi)itcgratio amoris, restored the apostle to his own self-respect, 
and left no doubt resting upon his future priority in the society. 
His friend too, and his Lord's, unforgotten of either, must tarry 
on till the judgment thunders broke over Jerusalem, a real judicial 
coming of the Christ, and a type and shadow of the Last. 

■' The spell of the mountains seems to have been on St. Mat- 
thew, and he loved to contemplate the Son of God in those 
solemn sanctuaries." x The spell was upon the disciple because 
it was upon his Galilean Master. Upon some Galilean height, 
it may well have been the mountain of the Sermon, for it was 
specially appointed by Jesus, and would have been well-known 
ground, Christ came to them. It was the time for a Royal pro- 
clamation. All authority in heaven and earth was His by gift. 
He now issues His royal commission to baptize in the threefold 
Name and disciple the world, and pledged His word that the 
Royal presence would accompany the faithful to the consum- 
mation of the world. The circle of victory widened through 
unknown reaches to invisible shores of hope. The Messianic 
hope was lifted and extended beyond national borders and 
temporal royalties to the regions of the Infinite and the Eternal. 
Earth and heaven were different provinces of one Empire. 
The Head over all, blessed for ever, stood before them. 

It would be travelling out of our way to point out how this 
truth was only gradually realized through the shock of party 
conflicts, voices of debate and discord in the apostolic company, 
the disseminating effect of persecution, the rise of a personality 
of unique power and unclouded vision upon the scene of 
Christian warfare, and the direct visions and revelations of the 
Lord from heaven : so slow is human nature to rise to the 
supernatural, so ready to lapse from its highest moments of 
conviction, and to fall into moral disintegration and spiritual 
disorder. 

No details remain of other manifestations. He appeared to 
"above five hundred brethren at once" (1 Cor. xv. 6), of whom 
more than two hundred and fifty were alive twenty-eight years 
after. Such a large company of witnesses of the Resurrection 
must have disseminated the seeds of faith far and wide, especi- 
1 Bp. Alexander, "Leading Ideas," p. 16. 



204 JESUS CHRIST. 

ally when the persecution of which St. Stephen was the first 
victim scattered the faithful. We also learn from St. Paul 
(i Cor. xv. 7) of an appearance to James. "At the time when 
St. Paul wrote, there was but one person eminent enough in the 
Church to be called James simply without any distinguishing 
epithet— the Lord's brother, the bishop of Jerusalem. It might 
therefore be reasonably concluded that this James is here meant. 
And this view is confirmed by an extant fragment of the Gospel 
according to the Hebrews, the most important of all the 
Apocryphal Gospels, which seems to have preserved more than 
one true tradition, and which expressly relates the appearance 
of our Lord to His brother James after His ascension." l If 
Bishop Lightfoot's inference be accepted there are nine re- 
corded appearances of the Lord after His resurrection, if that 
to James be placed before His ascension there are ten. 

Tradition preserves a beautiful memory of an appearance to 
His mother. It is difficult to suppose that the inspired historian 
of the Magnificat, who does not either forget to mention her 
presence with the apostles, with the women, and with His 
brethren in the upper chamber (Acts i. 14), should have omitted, 
or been ignorant of such a record. But " le cceur a ses raisons," 2 
and upon such heart reasons we dare not contradict, though we 
may not affirm, such a greeting between mother and Son as 
would have been a foretaste of the first in heaven. 

The Lord might also have made an unrecorded appearance 
to His "brethren," i.e., Joseph's sons by a former wife, 3 His 
foster-brethren. Certainly we find them gathered together with 
the apostolic company after the Resurrection, " all " of whom 
"continued with one accord in prayer and supplication" (Acts i. 
14). Yet shortly before His passion they did not believe in 
Him (John vii. 5). How did this happy change come about ? 
Bishop Lightfoot suggests that the Lord's appearance after the 
Ascension, as he places it, to James was the turning point in 
his religious life and that of his brethren. This is open, how- 
ever, to the serious objection mentioned above of James being 
in the company of the faith before the Ascension. Nor have 
we any records of our Lord's appearing to unbelievers in 
order to win their faith, for Thomas had been no unbeliever 
before the passion. It would seem, then, the more natural sup- 

1 Bp. Lightfoot, " Galatians," p. 265. 2 Pascal. 

3 According to the Epiphanian view. 



THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS. 205 

position that James and His brethren were among the fruits of 
the Passion-travail of His soul, whom the Resurrection brought 
out of the tremors and hesitations of imperfect conviction. 
The influence of the Lord's mother, and His kinsmen after the 
flesh, such as the sons of Zebedee, would have told in this 
direction. And the appearance to James, if it really took place 
after, not before, the Ascension, would have been the reward of 
faith, its effect, not its cause. 

Such changes of conviction are suggestive of others like 
them. The inward histories of faith are not hewn after the 
same fashion, but vary with the infinite diversities of human 
character, Among the " more than five hundred," some of 
whom still "doubted," but probably ended in full conviction, at 
least when the Holy Spirit came down and convicted thousands 
of the sin and sinfulness of unbelief (John xvi. 9) ; among the 
thousands of the Pentecostal day of conversion ; among the 
"great company of the priests" (Acts vi. 7) who became 
obedient unto the faith ; among the number of the disciples 
who within so short a time as that preceding the preaching of 
St. Stephen " multiplied in Jerusalem greatly ; " among the 
many, in short, of the apostolic first-fruits there cannot fail to 
have been some in various stages of progress towards the faith, 
who had witnessed or heard of the crucifixion, who if among 
the recognized five hundred brethren had witnessed, if outside 
the inner circle had not witnessed, but heard the report of 
witnesses. Certainly the statistics of the faith would have been 
very different on Good Friday, on Ascension Day, and a week 
after Pentecost. 

The great Forty Days must be regarded as an organic whole. 
The moral education of the disciples had been completed. The 
discipline of character had received its finishing touches. The 
shafts had been polished (Isa, xlix. 2), they had been kept 
close in the quiver : now they must fly abroad. The Church 
had centred in Christ's own Person. The Church had been 
integrating. The little community who followed Him con- 
stituted the faithful. The Divine society had been in the 
nursery stage. Childish things must now be put away, as when 
a young man leaves a godly father's roof, enriched by hallowed 
examples and speaking memories, to do battle in the struggle 
for existence. The example of Christ had done its work. 
Memory was filled to the full. A fund of energy could be 



206 JESUS CHRIST. 

drawn from the past. New resources must be opened up. New 
powers furnished. A new impetus derived from the present. 

The great Forty Days is the period of organization. The 
differentiating movement had begun in the separation of the 
Twelve, it continued in the separation of the Seventy, it was 
now made constant. The simple unclassified collection of 
believers formed a little Messianic knot and nidus. 

The new society was organized upon a definite basis, with a 
definite formula of initiation and bond of cohesion. It was 
gifted with the promise and potency of self-government, self- 
development, self-propagation, " a plant, like those of the first 
creation, having seed in itself upon the earth." x The family of 
God was promised indestructibility and spiritual fertility. The 
unexplained title, Son of Man, cast its light forward. The Son 
of Man was the ideal Man, and the King of men. His kingdom 
found satisfaction for all the wants of humanity in all relations 
Godward and manward. Every development of truth and 
righteousness in every direction is a ray from the Kingdom of 
light. The Light in the world must now diffuse itself into the 
world. The mind of Christ is the ideal human mind. The 
soul of Christ is the glorified human soul. The Body of Christ 
is the glorified spiritualized human body. Christward march 
all the forces in heaven and earth, good to their consummation 
and coronation, evil to their destruction, 

" On to the distant 
Star of existent 
Rapture and love." 2 

As there was development in the sphere of order, so there 
was development in the sphere of faith. The germ of the 
Catholic faith lay in the confession of the leading apostle, 
" Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," at a crucial 
moment. The baptismal formula embodies and completes the 
definition. Whatever legitimate development there has been in 
the formulation of Christian truth has rendered explicit what 
was implicit. There have been parasitic growths which have 
cumbered the ground, and embarrassed the freedom of natural 
progress and soiled its many-hued bloom. As all true develop- 

1 Bp. Cotterill, " Genesis of the Church." 

2 Goethe, "Faust," translated by Bayard Taylor. 



THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS. 207 

ment tends to repair to its original source, and to conform to 
its proper type, so all excrescences tend to fall away. As the 
different sections of Christendom, which stand self-condemned 
by the very fact of being sections, gravitate nearer to their 
Centre and source they must draw nearer to one another. In 
the end the centripetal tendency must fuse all together who 
obey it. As there are three Persons in one indivisible God, as 
Jesus Christ eternally unites divinity and humanity in Himself, 
so through and in Him humanity moves on to its deification. 
The nearer humanity approaches Christ, ideally and actually, 
the nearer it approaches unity, Divine and human. For such 
Christian unification, inward and outward, all Christians should 
work and pray. And the day of days must come when Christ's 
unfulfilled words are fulfilled, and Christ's unanswered prayer is 
answered. 

The permanence, the identity, of the Lord's Body was as real 
as the permanence, the identity of His soul. He had submitted 
His risen Body to the touch of Thomas and the others ; He had 
allowed Mary to cling to His feet, if but for a moment ; He had 
in the preceding meal taken and eaten before them. His Body 
then was under new conditions, but the same. It was a spiritual 
Body, yet it had not put off material relations. It consisted then 
of spiritualized matter. That all the bodies of the faithful Chris- 
tians will be so spiritualized, St. Paul has expressly taught under 
the figure of the seed. That all matter will undergo spiritual 
transformation seems a further inference necessitated by the 
view of the Son of Man as the Head and Archetype of Creation. 
So, too, early Christian thinkers taught. " The Lord," says St. 
Cyril of Jerusalem, "will roll up the heavens, not in order to 
destroy them, but in order to raise them up better." x Such a 
conception follows upon the consideration of the view of Creation 
opened up by St. Paul in the eighth chapter of the Romans. As 
Irenaeus long ago discovered, "The Creation, therefore, itself 
must be renewed to its old condition, and without hindrance 
serve the righteous." 2 And it is needless to dwell, for it would 
take us too far away from our subject, upon the sidelights flashed 
in by such physical doctrines as those of the conservation of 
energy. 

The permanence, the identity, of the Lord's human soul was 
1 Quoted by Rev. P. G. Medd, Bampton Lectures, p. 566. 
a Irenaeus, v. xxxii. 1. 



208 JESUS CHRIST. 

also proved by His human feelings. He took a human interest 
in the places and the persons He knew before. There was no 
break in the continuity of His affection. Whatever scenes He 
witnessed in the bodiless world, He had not forgotten any of 
His earthly life or any of His earthly friends. St. Peter's denial 
is recalled to the apostle His little flock are His brethren. 
The Cross had not stamped out, but stamped in, all that had 
gone before. The Resurrection had brought new life, had not 
abolished the old, but preserved it. The permanence, the 
identity, of human affections in the risen state is surely here 
indicated beyond any possibility of doubt. All that has gone 
to form the Christ-life and the Christ-love, and to contribute 
thereto, will remain under revived glory and resurgent blessed- 
ness. All the sweet affections and friendships, all the heaven- 
born recollections, whereby hearts have been bound in the 
strongest, tenderest bands, sundered awhile by death, shall here 
find their fullest consecration, their highest development, their 
perfected resurrection. All that is Christian in every possible 
development of the Christ-energy, from the highest glories of 
the greatest saint to the lowest and least stone in the Temple, 
rose in Him. The thoughts raised thereby are boundless, they 
burst the limitations of the human mind, enlarged and illumi- 
nated by the radiant revelations of the inspired prophets of the 
new Covenant, of the Apocalypses of the Divine character and 
working. 

The four distinct records of the resurrection life of Christ shed 
differing, but converging, lights upon that life. Briefly, it may 
be said that St. Matthew views Jesus from his Jewish point of 
belief as the risen Messiah, victorious and triumphant, " estab- 
lishing an external polity upon the basis of the Old Cove- 
nant ; " l and " over all is the light of a glorious majesty, abiding 
even unto the end." 2 And " he alone notices the humble adora- 
tion of the risen Lord before His ascension, and, as if with 
jealous care, traces to its origin the calumny currently reported 
among the Jews to this day." 3 St. Mark's account is compli- 
cated by the question of the original source of the last verses. 
That question is still an open one, for weighty names are ranged 
upon both sides. 4 But even those who reject the verses as a 

1 Bp. John Wordsworth, " Un'.\ .-ity Sermons," p. 22. 

2 Westcott, " Study of the Gospels, " p. 332. 3 Ibid. 

4 Lachmann, Griesbach, Tregelles, Tischendorf, Weiss, Westcott and 



THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS. 209 

part of the original Mark accept their canonicity, and so, for 
our purpose, as trustworthy documentary evidence they may be 
provisionally admitted. St. Mark is then seen to be filled with 
the personal energy of the strong Son of God. And the strongest 
argument on internal grounds for retaining the last section, or 
regarding it, at all events, as the later work of the same hand, 
springs from the "moral connection " and unity of tone "be- 
tween the body of the Gospel and the last and crowning 
section." x St. Luke, according to the uniform drift of his 
Gospel, depicts the risen Lord as the incarnate Saviour, and 
connecting the Resurrection with the Passion "unfolds 
the spiritual necessity by which suffering and victory were 
united." 2 St. John, on the other hand, great organizer of the 
Church 3 as he was before and at the time he wrote, dwells upon 
the Lord in His individual and inner relations with disciples in 
the interlacings of faith within the communion of saints. 

Yet the fourfold picture in itself was inadequate. Outlines of 
the risen, as of the whole earthly, life, are all that have reached 
us. For " even the world itself," said the last and greatest 
witness, " would not contain the books that should be written," 
if all were told. 

Hort reject ; Bleek, Lange, Hilgenfeld, Broadus, McLellan, Scrivener, 
Morison, Cook, Bishops Wordsworth of Lincoln and Salisbury, and Dr. 
Salmon retain. See especially Salmon, p. 190 foil., and Schaff, "Com- 
panion," p. 189. 

1 Bishop John Wordsworth, of Salisbury, 1. c. p., p. 23, in an eloquent 
defence of the retention of the section in the original body of the Gospel. 

2 Westcott, 1. c. 3 In Asia Minor. 



15 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE ASCENSION AND AFTER. 

" When fire is kindled on the earth it glows 
In highest heaven ; none run uncall'd, none love 
Unloved ; below, above, 
Thy works are many, but Thy Name is One." 

Dora Greenwell, "Carmina Crucis." 

The scene fitly closes at Jerusalem. May it not re-open there 
in the fulness of time ? He leads out the witnesses, not to, but 
towards, Bethany. " To three only had the first Transfiguration 
been granted. All the apostles are to behold the second, and 
yet greater, Transfiguration." 1 The traditional scene must be 
rejected, for it is only half a mile from the city. One of the 
eastern slopes of Olivet, overhanging Bethany, satisfies the re- 
quirements of the narratives. Somewhere here He visibly 
ascended, accompanied by a choir of prayer, and escorted by 
a guard of angels. The Blessed One was last seen blessing. 
Some have supposed that " the nine days of the ascent refer to 
the nine orders of angels through whom He passed to reign." 
Let only Dante eyes look into the clouds of glory which roll 
between the upper and under Church. 

' ' Ascendit in coelos, sedet ad dextram Patris." 

The glad tidings of the kingdom of God end with the music of 
uplifted hearts and voices in the Temple, like a far-off ringing 
of heavenly bells about the feet of the great High Priest. 
Surswn corda. 

1 Archdeacon J. P. Norris. 



THE ASCENSION AND AFTER. 211 

The Ascension was an act as strictly necessary as the Resur- 
rection. The 'AvtoZojti, the very Life could not but return to its 
own level. And for the disciples it was necessary as supplying 
the last link in the chain of faith. If Christ came in a super- 
natural way it was meet that He should leave in a supernatural 
way. " How could His resurrection have formed, for the dis- 
ciples, the basis for belief in an eternal life, if it had been 
subsequently followed by death ? " r Even if the account had 
never been given the conviction of the Lord's ascension and 
continuous life above is the constant presupposition of the dis- 
ciples' life and worship and work. The evidence of the fact and 
the evidence of their conviction of the fact are interdependent. 
And the result of their convictions in themselves and others 
ends to proof independently the validity of the same. 

St. Luke, upon whose mind the before-mentioned allusion to 
the Ascension, 2 shows how vivid an impression that event made 
upon his mind, gives a brief summary in the Acts of the great 
Forty Days in the light of the Ascension and its Pentecostal 
sequel. 

The question of the future developments of Christ's kingdom 
upon earth is too wide an one for brief treatment. We can only 
note one or two headings. First, that past progress, inward 
and outward, past development, inward and outward, is 
the pledge and the earnest of future. Parallel development 
of force seems suggested on the side of evil, and fore- 
shadowed upon whole lines of Scripture. The accumulations, 
the organizations of spiritual activity, motive or latent, both in 
the realms of the seen and the unseen, increase with the 
increase of every unit to the one side or the other. 

Upon a merely arithmetical basis, the conversion 3 of India at 
the present rate of Christian increase in comparison with the 
rate of increase of population is within measurable distance. 
And if of India, of China and the great races of Central Africa. . 
In both these barely opened doors the signs of future submission 
to Christ are not wanting. 

1 Neander. 2 Chap. ix. 51. 

3 The data upon which these views are based are too lengthy to insert, 
and lead to conclusions quite at variance with Canon Taylor's. Special 
reference may be made to Sir R. Temple's evidence, " Oriental Experience,'' 
pp. 134, 135, 142, 143, 161, 162, ''India in 1880,'' and Sir W. Hunter's 
statistics. 



212 JESUS CHRIST. 

The most difficult problem before the Christian is the con 
version of Israel. But even in this peculiar field there is the 
promise and potency of life from the dead. The Jewish sabbath 
hymn may be applied in a wholly Christian sense, 

" Thou city of our King ! Thou royal shrine ! 
Rise from thy ruins ! rise once more and shine ! 
Soon shall thy tears in the sad vale be o'er ! 
Soon shall His mercy bid thee weep no more ! " x 

The language of the Old Testament in regard to the return of 
the chosen people not only to God, but to their own country 
also, is read by some in a purely spiritual light in reference to 
spiritual blessing, but the present writer agrees with a living 
scholar that " the general tenour of the Old Testament pro- 
phetic language with regard to God's treatment of purposes 
towards the Jews does point to a recovery and a restoration to 
His favour and to their own country ;" 2 and echoes his ques- 
tion with regard to St. Paul's language in the eleventh chapter 
of the Romans, may the apostle "mean that in the predicted 
and now visibly incipient decay of faith among Gentile Churches, 
a movement towards faith in Christ on the part of the Jews, or 
some considerable portion of them, may revive Christianity in 
the world ; and that, coincidently with the return of the Jews in 
large numbers, whether with Christward tendencies or other- 
wise, to their own land, Jerusalem, when the times of the 
Gentiles shall have been fulfilled, may become once more, 
through the faith of Christian Jews, the centre of Christian life 
in the world?" Such would be a Messianic age fulfilling under 
Christian conditions many of the most sublime previsions of 
Jewish seers, and the most patriotic aspirations of the higher 
Rabbinism. 

Christian thought cannot stop at the Ascension. Christian re- 
velation itself beckons it further. Christian science rigorously 
demands a continuity of life and energy. Such life and energy 
might conceivably be a vanished force. It might upon such 
ground be held that Christ's relation to the earth had ceased 
with His departure. But the same record which hands down 

1 A. Bernstein, " The City of David," p. 25. 

2 Canon Medd ; for a long list of texts vide Medd's Bampton Lecture, 
p. 553, note xvi. 



THE ASCENSION AND AFTER. 213 

His departure contains His promises of return by the Spirit, 
and of His permanent continuance even unto the end of the 
world, and intimates a development, an increase in the exercise 
of His powers and functions. In whatever sense, and with 
whatever power, Jesus was Prophet, Priest, and Sovereign of 
His people below, initially, the same is He under glorified con- 
ditions now. The full and entire discharge of all corresponding 
and consequent offices and functions belong to Him still. His 
environment is changed infinitely for the higher. His powers 
must correspond. What is unchangeable in Him is His Divine 
Person and Character. What is unchanged in Him, though 
glorified, is His human Nature, indissolubly annexed to the 
Divine, which has gone from glory to glory. It is through His 
human Nature enthroned above that He is the causative force 
and primitive energy of all the energies of His kingdom. 

The sketches of the Acts, the histories and experiences dis- 
closed or implied in the Epistles, both of churches and indi- 
viduals, supplement the Gospel memoirs. They constitute "the 
Gospel of the Holy Spirit." They are brief typical examples of 
the heavenly life of Christ transmitting itself through and into 
earthly lives, characters, ministries, agencies. They are the 
uplifting of His hand, the stretching out of His arm, the breath- 
ing of His breath. He is the Thinker, the Worker, the Saviour, 
the Reformer, the Preacher, the Pastor, the Organizer, the 
Teacher, the Unifier. 

He is either this or He is out of the world, and out of all re- 
lation to it. Here we find the truth which Pantheism distorts ; 
the Immanence of the Christ in the Church and in the world. 
Mankind will not be able to abide long in the half-way houses 
of Theism. Man will find God in Christ everywhere or nowhere. 
He will see the infinite radiations from the Light of light in all 
the scattered rays of light, or He will stand in blank blindness 
before the myriad dance of atoms, the fortuitous rush of im- 
personal forces, in a world unredeemed, bounded by the infinite 
dark of the unknowable, a Christless cosmic chaos, and chaotic 
cosmos. Between faith and faithlessness, hope and hopeless- 
ness, love and lovelessness, stands midway the form of a Cross, 
and the mystery-solving mystery of a Divine Sufferer with out- 
stretched hands ! 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST. CHRIST AS A MORAL AND 
SPIRITUAL WORKER. 

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever '' (Hebrews 
xiii. 8). 

Miracles morally conditioned — Jesus Christ a spiritual miracle— Strength 
of right will — His originality, negative and positive — Authoritativeness 
— Placed humanity upon the throne of the cosmos, and made moral 
and spiritual interests supreme — Gave a moral ideal, and a moral 
dynamic — Individualism — Universalism — Women — Children — Practi- 
cal every-day morality — Consistency — New virtues and graces — Faith — 
Hope— Love — Humility — Truth — Religion of the Body — Unification 
of religion and morality — Prayerfulness — Self-assertion of sinlessness. 

The author of " Supernatural Religion " thinks that he has 
caught the Christian apologist in a vicious circle, when he says, 
" that the whole argument rests upon miracles which have 
nothing to rest upon themselves but the Revelation." But the 
statement is a begging of the question. Christianity rests as 
upon a foundation-stone upon the character of Jesus Christ. 
The character, the life of Jesus Christ appears to the honest 
seeker after truth to be a spiritual miracle, to be the spiritual 
miracle of history. Upon His character revealed in His life, 
and His life flowing out of His character the whole historic 
structure of the faith hangs. Physical miracles are but one 
expression of His character, and one of the many-sided ex- 
hibitions of His energy. They constitute, therefore, one line 
of evidence, and unquestionably they belong to the substance 
and texture of the revelation. But no candid thinker can 
impose upon them the whole weight of truth. 



THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 21 5 

Once admitting the supernaturalness of Christ as a personal 
spiritual force, the admission of supernatural in the physical 
region follows, as the less contained in the greater, the part in 
the whole, to any but the believer in the purely mechanical. 
When we further examine the miracles which disturb the 
phenomenal order of the world, as we understand it, we can- 
not escape the inference that they are spiritually conditioned. 
In no one single case can the mere manifestation of power for 
its own sake be detected. There is always a moral background. 
The currents of moral causation set those of physical effect. 
Moral conditions are annexed to the whole machinery of 
miracle, from the lesser ones of healing, which were, so to speak, 
the letting out of His own spiritual and physical health into the 
diseased spiritual and physical organisms of His patients, to 
the supreme miracle of His own Resurrection, which vindi- 
cated the truth of His claims to be the Lord of life and death, 
and the Master of an eternal life which no physical dissolution 
touched. 

We further notice a strict principle of economy in the work- 
ing of His miracles. Granting Him the power, how rarely He 
used it ! How many needs were left unsatisfied, how many 
sufferers unhealed, how many evidential forces held back, even 
during His official life, and during His private life, the silence 
of self-control, the majestic, unhasting calm of those — 

" Who only stand and wait," 

till a higher Power bids them wait no more, but work ! 

No one who harbours critical doubts of the verifiable testi- 
mony of the Gospels disputes the fact of Christ's life. If the 
character depicted in the Gospels was not His historical 
character, the miracle of conceiving and exhibiting His cha- 
racter must be transferred to the four Evangelists, and to the 
writers of the Epistles. This is to reject a smaller miracle in 
order to accept a much greater one. It has been reserved for 
Bruno Bauer to exemplify such a reductio, not ad adsurdum, but 
ad absurdissimum, when he put forth in the year 1879 a book 
in which Seneca and Philo of Alexandria are averred to be 
the real founders of Christianity ! Such criticism is its own 
refutation, and damages both moral and intellectual respect 
for the ultra-critical school all along the line, just as a bad 



2l6 JESUS CHRIST. 

professing Christian often does more harm than an open 
opponent. 

We see in Jesus Christ more than in any one who ever 
lived the majestic strength of a self-determining will, per- 
fectly bent on perfect ends. He was right Will incar- 
nate. His personal causality was independent of His 
surroundings. He did not adapt Himself, except under the 
physical limitations of His real human Nature, to circum- 
stances ; He adapted circumstances to Hill will. He com- 
manded them as thei«r lawful Lord, subject in all times and 
places to the Will above. He lifted, He transformed the good ; 
the evil He put down, He destroyed. Even His enemies never 
accused Him of being the tool of any party or person. His 
independence was acknowledged while it was condemned. In 
His life conscience sat upon a throne, threatened by a host of 
claimants, unshaken for a moment. In the court of His con- 
science the absolute rule of duty reigned — for duty was 
synonymous with the dear Will of His Father. 

The moral creativeness of Jesus is admitted by unbelievers. 
But the absolute contrariety of His moral spirit, His authori- 
tativeness, His temper, and His very words fairly taken in their 
context, to all the moral environment of the time, Pharisaic, 
Sadducaic, Essene, or Gentile, is fatal to any theory of its 
human derivation. The only moral teacher who approached 
the outer edge of His conceptions was the Baptist. But the 
Baptist never rose above the level of the prophets, and every 
word he spake sprang from legal roots. And the Baptist 
towered morally above his fellows, for he occupied the moral 
platform of the prophets while the Judaism of the day 
had sunk to the Rabbinical levels, both negatively and 
positively. The negative ideal was "to keep one's self 
from sin, not a positive one, to do good upon the earth." 1 
While the positive ideal of devotion to the Law resulted in 
traditionalism and externalism, and the narrowest national and 
individual selfishness. " The Creator of heaven and earth 
becomes the manager of a petty scheme of salvation ; the living 
God descends from His throne to make way for the Law. The 
Law thrusts itself in everywhere ; it commands and blocks up 
the access to heaven ; it regulates and sets limits to the under- 

1 Wellhausen, "History of Israel," p. 509. 



THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 2\J 

standing of the Divine working on earth. As far as it can, it 
takes the soul out of religion and spoils morality." x 

Jesus showed indisputable originality as a moral Teacher, 
both negatively and positively. Negatively by rejecting the 
most approved teachers and rulers of thought of the time, by 
His polemics again externalism, by His reversing the moral 
positions of Pharisee and publican or sinner, and His oppo- 
sition to mere traditionalism. Positively His originality con- 
sisted both in what must have seemed to His enemies a 
reactionary return to the primitive fountains of inspiration and 
revelation, an insistance upon the eternal validity of the moral 
law, and by superadding to it not a crust of overriding tra- 
dition, but a new height and breadth and depth, new 
sanctions, new promises, new penalties. There was no break 
with the old Law ; there was expansion ; there was develop- 
ment. Such expansion and development were not natural. The 
natural development had been downwards towards decay and 
deterioration. Rabbinism is the proof result ; Hillel the finest 
flower. It was entirely supernatural, as the expression of a 
superhuman mind under the impetus of superhuman force. 
"Out of the covenant God of Israel grew the Father; out of 
the dignity of Israel, the dignity of man ; out of the national 
fellowship, human love ; out of the theocracy, the universal 
kingdom of God ; out of the law of the two tables, with an 
omission of the sacrificial statutes, the service of the moral act 
of the heart." 2 This advance in ideas is tremendous measured 
from the highest height and purest purity of the old Covenant 
teaching ; from the debased, adulterated teaching of a genera- 
tion in Israel perverse and adulterous, and outside Israel 
corruption itself, the leap was infinite. It was a revolution, or 
rather a new creation. And as the teaching towered above 
contemporaneous teaching, so did the Life much more than 
ower above contemporaneous lives. The Lawgiver outdid 
His own law. The highest non-Christian ethical teaching, on 
the other hand, found and finds no adequate expression in the 
life. Ethical ideals are not lived, is the uniform complaint both 
of preacher and of disciple. Video meliora firoboqite deteriora 
sequor. Oh wretched man that I am, who can deliver me ? 
without the unsaying answer ere the question has left the lips ; 

1 Wellhausen. 3 Keim, vi. 429 



2l8 JESUS CHRIST. 

I thank God— and how thank I God ?— through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. 

Another aspect of His originality was His authoritativeness. 
There had been strong authoritativeness in the illustrious line 
of the prophets. One after another had claimed to be the 
accredited organ of God's revelation. One to another had 
handed on the sure word of prophecy. One from another had 
received, confirmed, and transmitted to spiritual successors, the 
awful heritage of benediction and cursing, of promise and of 
threatening. Yet all had pointed on with hand uplifted to Him 
who was to come, and would fulfil and sum up, and complete 
all the preliminaries of prophecy. John the Baptist spake with 
the same authoritativeness. Yet he and they claimed only the 
place at the footstool ; they were not the Light ; they were but 
lights reflected, derivative. Christ spake with all the authorita- 
tiveness of all the prophets, and much more than all. For 
their authority was impersonal and derivative. His authority 
was native, personal, primary. They affirmed, as saith the 
Lord. Jesus affirmed, I say unto you. 

As He transcended the Baptist and the prophets, much more, 
then, He transcended contemporary teachers. Their highest 
conception was faithfulness to tradition. They might draw out 
of their treasure things old, but things new never. The Rabbi 
was "'a well-plastered pit,' i filled with the water of knowledge,' 
' out of which not a drop could escape.' " The only room for 
spontaneity was in the manipulation and adaptation of pre- 
cedents and the infinite subdivision of applications. Memory 
was the supreme intellectual virtue. 

The moral and intellectual authoritativeness of Christ was 
original and self-dependent. ;J J sprang from His Divine certi- 
tude. Christ had spiritual' and intellectual certitude. Truth 
was to Him unclouded. It flowed from Him as from a pure 
perennial fountain fed from the Divine deeps. He had no 
wrestle with doubts, no hesitations, for His mind was perfectly 
poised. No fallacies could ever mislead Him, for they are spun 
of the Spirit of error which could find nothing in Him. But 
for His immediate contact with absolute truth He could never 
have apprehended the true Messianic ideal at a time when it 
was lost and had to be recovered. Perfectly humble, perfectly 
simple, perfectly sincere, He uniformly asserted, and uniformly 
acted upon the assertion, that He knew the truth, that indeed 



CHRIST AS A MORAL AND SPIRITUAL WORKER. 219 

He was the Truth. All the expansions and developments of 
truth through the ages in all departments of the knowable are 
the workings of His mind, the continuous outpourings from the 
treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Him, and pro- 
gressively disclosed through the minds He enlightens and leads 
on to all the truth. While He had immediate native com- 
munion with truth He did not slight, but honoured previous 
teachers. He drew from them words and thoughts. He 
appealed to historical, to prophetic evidence and instruction. 
" This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." "Moses and 
the prophets," "What read ye in the Law?" are phrases con- 
stantly on His lips. Often instead of opening some new fountain 
of truth He turns a questioner to the old flow, the old familiar 
current coin. 

Christ shifted the whole centre of interest in the world. The 
leading interest in the world became for the first time moral 
and human, and upon a definite basis. Human nature sprang 
into a supremacy of position and authority in the cosmos. Man 
is the explanation of Nature, the crown of its development, the 
god of its unconscious worship. In the hierarchy of forces 
he occupies the throne. Such a position was drawn out in the 
Epistle to the Romans in the great chapter which sees the en- 
franchisement of Nature implied in the glorious liberty of the 
children of God, and by a bold personification attributes to 
Nature a travail rainbowed with hope, and a hope issuing in 
fruition. Not only was human nature re-established in the 
dominion over Nature enjoyed before the Fall, but it was 
brought as a whole, and potentially in all its parts, to the 
throne of heaven. 1 And the whole process of redemption and 
glorification was transacted in the moral and spiritual region, 
upon moral and spiritual ground. "All the relations between 
it (human nature) and God became immediate and direct, not 
incident to it merely as part of the universal organism, but due 
to its own special state and essence ; so completely that they 
would remain the same were the visible frame of things to 
vanish and leave us alone in the infinite Presence." 2 If by 
"immediate and direct" be understood in and through Christ, the 
above statement is absolutely true for the Christian. Human 

1 Conf. Aristotle's splendid aspiration dXX', k<p oaov ivdtxerai (sc. ^p>)) 
dOavari'Cuv, N. Eth. x. 7. 
a Prof. Martineau, "Types of Ethical Theory," i. p. 14 foil. 



220 JESUS CHRIST. 

nature was elevated at every point, at every interest, pre- 
eminently in all its moral relations. In fact, under Christianity 
moral and spiritual relations penetrate and pervade all other, 
and measure their importance. 

Christ elevated human nature in itself. He also armed it 
with powers of self-development. In the first place, He set 
before humanity a supreme and absolute ideal. This ideal is 
final, and absorbs and concentres all minor and incidental 
ideals. It is the ideal of His own character and life Divine 
seen under human conditions. This ideal was His own con- 
ception and His own creation. 

More than this. It is one thing to exhibit an ideal, a very 
different thing to reach it. An art student may admire Michael 
Angelo, but does not dream of rivalling him. An ideal becomes 
a stimulus to the gifted, but the despair of the many. The 
Law had erected an ideal, and ended in repelling instead of 
attracting. 

Christ then gave a new power. It was not enough to set an 
example for imitation, not indeed outward, as some rare spirits 
have understood it, and rightly it may be for themselves, for 
what Christian would have spared a Francis of Assisi to the 
Church? — but universally applicable as to its spirit and relation, 
Godward and manward. That power is Christ Himself, and the 
Spirit of Christ as an inward energy and life. k 'The powers of 
the God-united humanity are made available for us men through 
the Spirit. The life of the Incarnate has not vanished from the 
earth ; it is perpetuated through spiritual channels in the race 
of the redeemed. The 'new Man,' like the ' old man,' exhibits 
Himself as a self-propagating type, self-propagating by its own 
laws, ' having its seed in itself, like every lower form or stage 
of life which had yet appeared." * The moral and spiritual 
self-developments of mankind hinge wholly upon the incorpora- 
tion of the Christ self in each self, and the appropriation of His 
nature according to His prescribed and certified media of grace. 

Christ gave a new sanction and meaning to the individual. 
The individual was the individual of God's love and care, and 
of the Son of man's, and consequently of man's. The individual 
was not lost in a crowd. Primitive society was a collection of 
families. Individ i il rights beyond the privileged classes were 
unknown outside the Jewish world. Aristotle regarded the 
1 Church Quarterly Review, July, 1883, pp. 292, 293. 



CHRIST AS A MORAL AND SPIRITUAL WORKER. 221 

slave as a human tool. Half the Roman Empire at least were 
at this time, it has been computed, in slavery. Even in Israel 
the ignorant Am-ha-aretz in Rabbinical eyes were accursed. 
Christ both declared the principle and acted upon the principle, 
of the sacredness of each separate individual in the eyes of the 
All- Father. Much of His time was given to the teaching of 
individuals. He did not deal only with masses. Rather His 
chief care was the individual training of the apostles. 

Nor was the individual elevated as an isolated individual, 
but organically, in his relation to the race. Racial differences 
and national prejudices were ignored. Jew and Samaritan, 
Syro-Phenician and Greek and Peraean, were all welcomed into 
the kingdom of God. The Son of David was the Son of man. 
Nations and kingdoms were to enter into a new nation, a 
spiritual Israel, a catholic society. With the Zealots, who were 
the representatives of extreme nationalism politically, as the 
Pharisees were religiously, we do not find any trace of sympathy. 
The de facto Roman Government was recognized as de jure. 
The threefold inscription of scorn upon the Cross was one of 
the unconscious prophecies of hate. The Gentiles were uni- 
formly regarded as unclean by all Jews, just as Englishmen by 
Brahmans. Christ opened the door to the Gentiles during His 
life, and commanded all nations to be baptized. All " hedges " 
and disabilities He broke down. 

The attitude of Jesus Christ towards women was the germ of 
their whole after enfranchisement. " The Mishna deliberately 
and constantly places women on a lower level than men, both 
legally and socially." x Jesus Christ treated the outcast 
Samaritaness with respect, was ministered to in life by women 
of their substance, and suffered His Body to be ministered to 
by women in death. He was the personal friend and guest of 
Mary and Martha. He had mercy and gentle words for the 
penitent harlot. Above all, He was born of a woman. And to 
His mother He rendered filial obedience for thirty years. His 
dealing with women has already been touched upon and con- 
trasted with non-Christian practice. 

Christ had sweet and gracious dealings with children. No 
children found place, or have left any record if they did, in the 
society of John the Baptist. Jesus loved them. He gave them 

1 Bennett, p 67. 



222 JESUS CHRIST. 

the Rabbi's blessing and touch. He observed their games, and 
drew illustrations of teaching from children playing in the 
market-place. They followed Him to the greenswards of the 
wilderness, and a little boy supplied the food of the five 
thousand. The children cried, " Hosanna," in the Temple. 
One child, unique in her history, He raised from the dead. 
Tenderness to children was no new thing even for fallen human 
nature. We see it in animals' affection for the young. Christ 
transfigured and renewed all natural affection. His intense 
desire for the spiritual regeneration and education of children 
breathes in His burning words against any who should offend 
one of these little ones ; and in His sweet revelation of their 
angels. 

Just as in His lowliness He raised women and children to 
new possibilities of honour in the future, and showed His 
reverence and honour to the weak, so His life and character 
revealed an every-day homeliness. His teaching was a living 
thing for every day, a living spirit which would pour oil and 
wine into the wounds of an injured man, which would forgive a 
brother his trespasses, which would pray for daily bread, which 
declared war with selfishness and covetousness in all shapes. 

Consistency is another mark of Jesus' character and view of 
life. We entirely fail to see any contradictions, or discords, or any 
gradation of ideas, such as Renan has asserted but not proved. 
There was progress in revelation of ideas according to maturity 
of receptiveness, but no change in His own attitude or purpose. 
The Father ; the Cross. These were the keywords from first to 
last. Wherever He was, He was always the same — in different 
places, societies, ethical sceneries, " the same soul, the same 
doctrine, the same faith in God the Father, the same religion of 
the love of God, of purity of heart, of renunciation of the earth, 
of heavenly hopes." x 

In the sphere of His spiritual creativeness Jesus added 
new virtues, both in example and precept. Faith was the one 
word which summed up the virtue of psalmists and prophets. 
But faith received newer and higher meanings and applications, 
and was submitted to severer strains. Jesus Himself showed 
an uniform temper of faith in God ; from first to last He trusted 
absolutely in His Father. When He committed His soul into 

1 E. Caro, " L'Idde de Dieu," chapitre iii. 



CHRIST AS A MORAL AND SPIRITUAL WORKER. 223 

His hands, it was the last act in the whole life of surrender. 
What He did He required, faith in God, faith in Himself. 
This was a necessary presupposition. Faith entered upon a 
new field. It formed the basis of all Christian life, the founda- 
tion of all morals. With faith, hope and love entered upon a 
new history. But this subject would require a treatise to itself. 
Let this remark suffice, faith, hope, and love, for Him and His 
bare both Godward and manward. He trusted in God, He 
knew man best of all, man's weakness, falseness, treachery, yet 
trusted too in man. To man He committed His work, His 
cause. He hoped in God, He hoped in man. He loved God, 
He loved man. The so-called service of man began with His 
life, His teaching, His death. He gave man a new interest 
in his brother. Neighbour was but one example of a word 
baptized into new meanings. 

Humility, as has often been observed, was a newly created 
virtue, born in Christ's example, and bred in His teaching. 
11 The characteristic of humility and submission," as Lotze * has 
observed, " that is lacking even in the most mournful expres- 
sions of this sense of finiteness in antiquity, was brought for the 
first time by Christianity into the heart of men, and with it hope 
came too. It was a redemption for men to be able to tell them- 
selves that human strength is not sufficient for the accomplish- 
ment of its own ideals." Truthfulness, in life and speech, was 
certainly enforced by Christ with new sanctions and guarantees. 
" I am the Truth," He certified, and Christendom has not yet 
got to the bottom of that statement. The Spirit of Truth He 
promised to send to lead into all the truth. 

A world of new religion began for the human body. Christ had 
supreme respect for matter, and for the human body, as the 
" roof and crown " of the material world. He showed it by His 
healings, generally by bodily touch. He showed by His bodily 
suffering and reverent burial. Above all, He showed it by His 
bodily resurrection. He showed it by His stress upon purity. 
This stands in the sharpest contrast to ultra-asceticism which 
treats the body as wholly evil, an idea so prevalent in Oriental 
religions. The death-bed of the eminent Buddhist pilgrim, 
Huian-Thsang, gives a striking example. " His friends are all 
invited to assemble round his couch and take a joyous leave of 
his 'impure and despicable body,' which, after having played its 
1 " Microcosmus, " Eng. transl., ii.p. 270. 



224 JESUS CHRIST. 

part, is lost to him for ever/' z Hinduism, through all its 
opposing forms of thought, agrees in one desire, the deliverance 
from the body. 2 Christ came to purify and redeem body as well 
as soul, and to set both in an eternity of inseparable glory, where 
His own body reigns. His body, He taught, was the Temple, 
which destroyed in " three days would rise again." Such 
teaching bore its fruit in St. Paul's dicta about the bodies of the 
redeemed Christians being the temple of the Holy Spirit. 

As in the redemption of the body, so in all ways, Jesus Christ 
effected an alliance and a permanent reconciliation between 
religion and morality. Contemporary religion consisted for the 
most part in ceremonialism. Jesus purified the Temple of traffic. 
The act was typical of His purification of all religion towards 
God. He found a moral factor in all religion. He enshrined 
forgiveness and brotherly love in the prayer of prayers. It is 
needless to contrast here Hinduism with its immoral divinities, 
its faith without works, its worshipper, who by offering up " an 
animal duly consecrated by Agni, and by Soma, is therewith 
able to buy off all deities at once ; " 3 as needless to contrast 
Mohammedanism. Whether modern moral systems in declared 
antagonism to Christianity, such as Comtism, non-Christian 
forms of Socialism and the Service of Man, are more than 
eclectic fragments, borrowing without acknowledgment from 
Christianity, as when Comte, "finally getting his Positive 
doctrine ' free of theological oppression and metaphysical 
dryness, and condensing it into a maxim that shall hold it all, 
alights, unconscious of their source, upon the words of Jesus, 
' It is more blessed to give than to receive,'" 4 whether such 
systems are capable of transcending Christianity and super- 
seding it in the struggle for existence, is for the disciples of 
such systems to prove. 

The very intellectual enfranchisement which is enjoyed by 
Christian and anti-Christian thinkers is a debt to Him who 
offered stimulus to thought as well as to feeling, who 
redeemed the intellect as well as the heart, whose after-course 
through the world, so far as it is traceable in the workings 
of Christians, has been a constant, steady progress towards 

1 Hardwick, "Christ and other Masters," Religions of China, p. 344. 

2 Cf. Rev. E. G. Punchard, " Hinduism," Mission Life, Feb., 1880. 
3Hardwick, " Christ and other Masters," p. 228. 

* Prof. Martineau, " Types of Ethical Theory," i. p. 475. 



CHRIST AS A MORAL AND SPIRITUAL WORKER. 225 

the enfranchisement of all right thinking, right speaking, 
right doing, and the gradual overthrow of the legions of 
error. The Christian who works from a basis of belief in the 
guidance of the Spirit of truth, in individuals in less degree, in 
collective Christianity in a greater degree, has a sure in- 
tellectual as well as moral standing ground ; whereas the non- 
Christian has only some man or system of thought to fall back 
upon, who, or which, must, in the invariable experience of the 
past, give way to new men and new systems. 

Jesws would not have been true man if He had not shown 
a spirit of prayer. Prayer is the life breath of the Christian, 
and cannot have been less to the Son of man. The Divine in- 
dwelling did not .exempt Him from the natural language of man 
conscious of God. Times of especial prayer were times of 
especial human need and signal work, times also of extraordinary 
Divine manifestation. It was while He prayed at the Baptism 
that the Holy Spirit descended ; after a night of prayer that 
the Twelve Apostles were chosen ; in prayer that He was 
transfigured; in the Gethsemane prayer that an angel comforted 
Him. It was the sight apparently of Jesus in prayer that 
prompted the prayer to be taught a form of prayer. At 
times He would give thanks before what He asked for to 
human eyes came to pass. " His prayer was the middle point 
of His activity, the holy altar upon which He ever consecrates 
and offers anew His humanity to God, and this is always in turn 
penetrated and illumined by the Divine." 1 

The most remarkable of all Christ's moral characteristics was 
His absence of any sense of sin, or moral shortcoming. Unlike 
any other moral teacher, He never expressed any moral regrets. 
He never, like the best of Israel's sons, a Moses, a David, a 
Nehemiah, a Daniel, bowed Himself in penitential confession. 
He not only knew His own sinlessness, but He asserted it ; 
asserted it as a necessary factor in His self-revelation, self- 
vindication, self-evidence, challenging His enemies to con- 
vince Him of sin. And the question still rings from His 
lips. And the adoring hearts and bowed heads, and 
triumphant hopes of millions of Christians, past and present, 
in life, and in death, in prayer and in working, whether they 
eat or drink, whether they sleep or wake, or whatever they 

1 Dorner, " System of Christian Doctrine,'' iii. p. 370. 
16 



226 JESUS CHRIST. 

do, bend before Him in His moral innocence, His spiritual 
strength, His inexhaustible love, His omnipresent energy, as 
still and for ever true Son of man and Son of God, as the 
centre and spring of their life in this world and their hope in 
the world to come. 



THE END. 



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